Olive Ayhens

Brooklyn, New York

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Olive Ayhens

Ayhens, a woman with light skin, smiles in front of a striped wall, wearing a flowered flat cap with red hair peeking out, red wire glasses and a navy shirt.

Olive Ayhens is an artist based in New York City. She has exhibited her work widely throughout the US and internationally. Ayhens has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant. She has completed residencies at Ucross, the Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, MacDowell Colony, Fundacion Valparaiso, the Salzburg Kunsterhaus, Yaddo Artist Residency, Djerassi Artist Residency, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Roswell Artist Residency, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, and at Schwandorf International, Bavaria. She received her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2023

Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2012

Website / Social Links

Color is my first language. My painting frequently evolves from a special sense of place, and transformation of environments in my own quirky ways. Sometimes a political/ecological subtext, but always the love of the paint itself. I am constantly renewed visually by everything around me, a feeling of the uniqueness of each environment in which I find myself.”