My name is Olivia Olson, I just recently turned eighteen (September 27th, to be exact), and I live in Columbus, Nebraska. I have loved to make art my entire life, usually by drawing ideas that just appeared suddenly in my head. Without having to look at anything the ideas were suddenly upon the paper, with great accuracy.

I have been told since the young age I began drawing that I had so much talent, creativity, and imagination; even my teachers would tell my mother this as I strayed farther away from them in the room to take up the entire chalk board to draw. Even when I moved from the farm in South Dakota to the growing town of Columbus, Nebraska, the comments seemed to follow me, through each level of education I entered; even my peers at the Columbus Public Schools constantly requested that I may draw something for them. And now that I am older, I am able to use my artistic abilities to use other artistic mediums to express my inner thoughts and feelings, and do so quite a bit.

When I attended Columbus Middle school, we were instructed to make a clay statue of a shoe. Mine was the most outrageous and colorful of the others, and reasonably realistic. Because of this, my shoe was placed in the Art Exhibit of the Columbus Public Library. Again, one of my pieces was placed in the library in my Freshman or Sophomore year of high school, but this time it was a self portrait. My instructor, Tim Garth, told us that we were to paint them in only white, black, and gray, and in my portrait, I wore a hat I was obsessed with, and shaded and copied a photograph of myself as accurately as possible. The background of that painting, though, I am most proud of due to the texture and creative use of the colors I was limited to. When my class had to do an evaluation of others’ work, my painting seemed to stand out the most by both my peers and my teacher.

Charlie Chaplin has been and inspiration to me, even though his area of expertise was acting and film making, I see drawing and painting not entirely different. He wanted to tell stories, inspire others, and change peoples’ lives with his works of art, and with my art, I tell stories, and I aspire to inspire and change peoples’ lives for the better. This is my dream, my life’s aspiration, my path to self-actualization.