Diane Olivier lives and works in San Francisco, California, where she has been a resident since 1990.

EDUCATION AND TEACHING: Born in Rhode Island, she received a BFA in Painting (although almost all her work was drawing) from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978. She moved to the West Coast in 1980 and received her MA from San Jose State University in 1983 and her MFA from University of California at Berkeley in 1984. After teaching in the Bay Area for 3 years she moved to the Mid West to teach at the University of Cincinnati from 1986 – 1990. That summer she co-taught at the Art Institute of San Francisco with Susan Hauptman and taught at San Jose State one year until hired at City College of San Francisco in 1991, where she continues to teach.

EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS: Some noteworthy exhibitions have been at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, and the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, CA in 1987, the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, AK in 1988, P.S 1 in Long Island City, NY in 1989 and the Palo Alto Cultural Center in Palo Alto, CA in 2001. Ms. Olivier has work in the Arkansas Art Center and private collections in the Bay Area. She has had gallery representation with Dorothy Weiss Gallery in San Francisco, CA. Awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Midwest Regional Visual Arts Fellowship, a six month residency at P.S. 1 in NY and an Ohio Arts Council Aid to Individual Artists Fellowship.

STATEMENT: Drawing was always her primary media, working with both traditional and non-traditional materials on scales ranging from small book size to mural size. Her subject matter ranges from figurative, landscape and cityscapes to non-representational. The media ranges from black and white charcoal and graphite, to full color chalk pastel to non-traditional mixed media. The sense of touch that occurs between the tool and the paper has been an important element in the process and drawing seems best suited to this experience.