Olea Nova is a visual artist and composer working across large-scale painting and experimental sound. Her practice centers on abstract, non-objective composition as a way to construct immersive spatial and perceptual experiences.
Improvising with color, Olea composes non-objective spaces shaped by a remembered sense of light, water, and architectural form. Working in thin layers of oil on canvas, she builds luminous surfaces in which light appears to emerge from within the painting itself. Through extended processes of layering, erasure, and reconfiguration, her forms remain fluid—continuously dissolving and reforming—leaving space open and indeterminate.
Olea’s compositions unfold as sequences rather than fixed images. Subtle shifts in color, transparency, and density create a sense of movement that invites slow, sustained looking. Spatial relationships are not immediate but gradually perceived, emerging over time through the viewer’s attention.
Alongside her visual work, Olea develops sound pieces that parallel her painterly approach. These works explore rhythm, duration, and the interaction of tonal events, creating environments where visual and sonic structures resonate with one another.
Olea’s work is driven by an interest in perception: how form, light, and sound can be organized to produce emotional and sensory experiences. Rather than resolving into stable compositions, her works seek a dynamic balance—finding moments of harmony within flux and instability.
Based in Chicago, Olea Nova’s studio practice is shaped by ambient conditions—natural light, street activity, and mechanical noises—which become part of an ongoing process of translating sensation, memory, and atmosphere into visual and sonic form.
