Olga Sinclair:  True To Herself
By: Angeles Ramos Baquero, 1999
Historian and Art Critic

Presentation Brochure of Elite Fine Art, Miami
(Translation by Lisa De Prudhoe)

"There is no artist within if he is not a philosopher of his own ideas,
searching for Beauty inside those thoughts".
Olga Sinclair

Olga Sinclair dreams of paintings. Wonderful dreams full of perfect form and color, mysterious players within confines where figure and background, perspective and composition are in constant tension. The sovereign act of creation always conquers the ultimate combat between light and color; because, for Olga, painting is her thought, her voice, her pledge.

Within the artist's intense search for a deeper and more meaningful communion, one is beguiled by an authentic passion in this current body of work. Her paintings are always subject to the cleansed, polished and iron-clad discipline of technical mastery. Now, at the height of her strength and maturity, these canvases confront us and are defined by a more immediate and forthright expression in which powerful and candid feelings prevail.

Her use of the large format as support is an obvious change in Sinclair's style. However, without renouncing the poetic requisite for the deep spirituality and sensibility of her art, Olga comfortably offers an extraordinary pictoric maturity, ardent and full of fervor, which is a departure from the hitherto reposeful lyricism that characterized her earlier work.


Making careful use of the academic nude and through the examined eye of the artist, there is an interesting reflection on masculinity and its world. She recovers, rebuilds and reinterprets classic themes such as "The Discus Thrower" and meditates on the very Nature of genus in "Birth of a good Man". Invisible ties of masculine solidarity which are formed from the safety of childhood games - that rough camaraderie that binds and separates men from the inevitable need to compete and win at play and in life itself - is shown with deep fraternity and understanding in "Childhood Friends". In this exhibition, Olga's paintings cease to be "Women's paintings" and become simply "Paintings", leaving behind the feminine slant which previously identified her work.

The artistic influences that contribute to content and to the powerful and direct form that abound in this show are perceived particularly in "A Prayer for Francis". This tribute to the Irish painter, Francis Bacon, is composed around a central huge and voluminous shape which is so characteristic of his work. From this mass others are born that overwhelm and constrict; reminding one of the constant and ubiquitous state of crisis and agony which incarcerate the Baconesque characters.

At this moment of artistic maturity, an obvious tie links this piece to the artistic tradition that decisively influences Olga Sinclair. From her inspiration in Bacon the handling of color is echoed, also recognizable are shape and form, along with the resolution of an ambiguous perspective that take us from Giotto to Van Gogh to Alfredo Sinclair. Huge areas of color are contained geometrically using rectangles, squares and ellipses that unify and give coherence to the relationship of figure and background.

Using few elements and guided by her inner instinct of knowing exactly when she has finished communicating what she wishes, in "Winter Afternoon", "Autumn Afternoon" and "Still-life at Nocturne", one senses an almost sculptural quality. With the evident influence of Georges Rouault and Alfredo Sinclair, strong curves contain her shapes reminding one of Gothic stained-glass windows both in color and in semblance.

Perhaps Olga Sinclair has never before desired to be so constant with herself than in this current series of work. She treats the pictoric and compositional matter until they relate the pure aesthetic and formal            "Childhood Friends", 1999