Resonance Series: Olivia M Healy

Published on 2020-06-16 00:00:00 by Jasper Golding

Welcome to this installment of the ‘Resonance Series curated by Jasper Golding. _This feature, running every other Tuesday, introduces you to musical individuals through the art forms they engage in, telling a personal story of their creative output and how different mediums influence each other._For this edition we introduce you to Olivia Healys dieties, celebrations of queer culture and the music scenes that go hand-in hand with it. 

Imaginative style icon Olivia Healy creates powerful figures that celebrate femininity and dance culture. Her work has been moulded by the scenes she is a part of and as a result they reflect today’s culture in a true form. Her work exploded on her moving to London and she began to embody the forms she depicted, not only blending together culture and music to inform her visuals, but also becoming a human representation of her subject matter, an embodiment of her art.

Olivia describes how ‘Going to nights such as Inferno, Opulence and Harpies definitely informed the figures’ she depicts in her work ‘their stances are energetic and dance-like with their hands frequently held up in the air above them, their bodies are colourful with form fitting outfits and powerful thigh high boots, and the colours behind them replicates the blue glow of a black light or the flashing lights in a club.’ The synergy here is key and it comes from a genuine love for the culture she embodies and depicts.

Olivia studied Illustration at Falmouth university and her work initially ‘was strongly influenced by nature and the relaxing environment around’ her. But her inclusion in the drag and dance scenes of london melded her subject matter into something that took this meditative approach and inverted it into an explosive celebration of current drag parties. 

INFERNO · INFERNO SEPTEMBER 2019 VENICE CALYPSO b2b LEWIS G. BURTON

Olivia talks about the meditative roles of nightlife and artwork in her life, both being a means to let go and focus on her immediate surroundings in their audio and visual manifestations. Her artwork reflects this celebration of moments and scenes in her totemic, almost religious homages to god-like beings; pure reflections of the energy of nightlife.

Olivia is ‘also drawn to the inclusivity of nightlife, which seems to far surpass the rest of society in the amount of both diversity and togetherness experienced on the dance floor.’ Her art reflects this beautifully, offering imagined idealist figures that are icons of fierce style and image.

She ‘really got the chance to explore replicating the club feel when (she) did Cabin Fever’s winter/spring poster series, and the illustrations were directly inspired by being out at their events.’

Olivia is a practising illustrator in London and continues to engage in the current scenes. She sells prints of her dieties here:https://oliviamhealy.bigcartel.com/

Written by Jasper Golding