Oleksa displays a touch of the postmodern

Local artist exhibits work at Masquers

SOAP LAKE — The Masquers Theater in Soap Lake is currently displaying the work of local painter, Oleksa.

The paintings are a mixture of materials painted onto glass or lexar, which creates various layers of paint on a single object. The story of Oleksa's paintings is one that begins far from Soap Lake.

He and his family immigrated to Manchester, England after the end of World War II and it was there that Oleksa began to paint.

"I benefited from not speaking the language," Oleksa said. In his early years of school, Oleksa was able to paint as often as he wanted due to the language barrier and the movement that encouraged art in schools at the end of the war. "Teachers said, 'just paint,' and I must have painted for two weeks straight."

After attending grammar school classes for a time, Oleksa was instructed by a teacher to show up at a museum in Manchester early one morning, long before regular museum hours.

"There were these monoliths," Oleksa said. Initially, it was the monoliths that drew his attention and he explored them for a time. As he came through the maze of monoliths, Oleksa saw the walls of the museum and saw images he recognized from school. A showing of selected student art was being displayed at the museum. "I noticed my cousin's painting first and then I started to see my own paintings."

In the museum, Oleksa realized that he would be an artist. Although, his first love was sculpture, not painting. After apprenticeships with local muralists and painters, Oleksa realized where his aptitude was and a painter was created.

"I had an immigrant mentality. I said, 'I'm just going to keep my head down and work hard,'" Oleksa explained. Laughingly, Oleksa reminisced about having line burns at 11 years old from mixing plaster and paint for frescoes and being proud of them.

"I am a mural painter by trade," said Oleksa. His apprenticeships began with muralists and informed his work in ways that are often difficult to describe. "Mural painters have to have the sketch up here (in their minds)."

Oleksa learned to paint on glass while assisting painters who were restoring chapels and cathedrals after the war. "I thought of it as a renascence for mural painters."

When asked to put his paintings in a genre, Oleksa says his work is "postmodern" but that there are layers of other genres in the work as well. "My work is what I am right now."

The allure of Soap Lake was in a pace that is slower than the urban areas Oleksa has worked in throughout his artistic life. "I always carried a picture of a man on a tractor in a green field and I always wanted to be there, to be on the steps (of the house)," Oleksa said.

Having settled into the quiet life, Oleksa is enjoying being able to paint without the demand of the commercial art world. The work currently on display is not for sale, as it is Oleksa's personal work and still relatively new. "This work is still new. I'm not worried about selling new work," said Oleksa.