On the occasion of her upcoming exhibition at One Off Gallery, Sarah Luddy met with Olivia Pendergast to discuss her work and the concepts behind the paintings.
Meeting with Olivia Pendergast I learned as much about meditation and non-duality as I did about her painting background & process – because for Pendergast it’s all tied together. Not necessarily painting and meditation being one, but that everything in the universe is one. Her work focuses on this consciousness and oneness gleaned in meditation.
Pendergast began mediating nearly 30 years ago. The practice she sits with is known as Non-duality Meditation and aims to experience the fundamental oneness of reality and consciousness, moving beyond the sense of a separate self.
Through her meditation practice, she teaches that true awareness exists before thoughts and emotions do, as a state of pure consciousness characterized by love and interconnectedness.
Pendergast in her studio
Non-duality involves recognizing both individual experience and fundamental interconnectedness. Pendergast describes this as a “seeming paradox” where we are simultaneously separate and still part of a unified consciousness. Pendergast used the metaphor of prisms – imagine we are 8 billion prisms, she said, with the same sunlight shining through. They’re each refracting and reflecting the light in their own way, but it’s the same sun.
The reconciliation of the paradox comes from understanding that individuality and unity are not mutually exclusive, but complementary aspects of existence. By softening our sense of rigid separation, we can simultaneously appreciate our unique perspective while recognizing our deeper interconnectedness. For Pendergast, this is not purely an intellectual exercise, but an experiential understanding that develops over time through contemplation and openness to the paradox.
Nothing’s permanent out here, the only thing that’s permanent, the only thing that’s never changed in your life, not one little bit, is the awareness that you actually are. It’s this consciousness. It’s so simple, it’s so easy to miss that we go through our lives thinking that we are our thoughts, and we’re not.”
Pendergast’s paintings visualize her philosophy. She has even experimented with stitching painted subjects onto backgrounds to illustrate the illusion of individual separation from greater consciousness.
“Even Her” – Pendergast visibly stiched the figure onto the canvas
Always drawn to painting, even as a small child, after completing secondary school she attended Columbus College of Art & Design (USA) where she majored in illustration. Following her degree she embarked on a successful career as an illustrator in Los Angeles, but eventually she felt pulled back to painting. The desire to create her own art led her to a transformative decision: she left her job, moved to a cabin in the mountains of Utah, and dedicated herself entirely to painting.
Pendergast says she paints what she feels the beauty of, not necessarily in a traditional, aesthetic sense. She may be attracted to the inner beauty of something: something that arrests her in her steps, stops her mind from turning over its daily thoughts of existence and takes her into a state of pure love. Or rather, what she says people equate to love – the feeling one gets with a disconnection from the ego-self, which is obtained when one is completely absorbed by something, completely in the moment:
There’s no seeking, there’s no thinking, there’s no future and past, and in that moment, you feel what we call love. It’s actually just a cessation of looking, of seeking, of wanting, of desiring”
Many of Pendergast’s figures have halos around them. While the paintings are not religiously themed, the halo symbolism is borrowed from religious and spiritual paintings, as seen around holy or enlightened figures across the historical art world, in Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist works. Pendergast uses the halo concept to highlight the consciousness that she believes we all live within.
“Aware of Hibiscus”
And she is keen to stress “ALL”. Her work also highlights her belief in the inner equality of humanity. Pendergast talked about seeing paintings in Vatican City, which depicted a pyramid of hierarchy, with the “holy” people at the top. She iterates that this is a skewed view – that everyone has an aura, everyone has the potential to connect with awareness. Thus Pendergast depicts characters from across socioeconomic classes in her paintings, with a halo of awareness.
When I paint people, it’s this immense amount of love and light that’s around them is the symbol, this generic, overused symbol for consciousness, for the light that we are. And the nice thing about it, kind of the bonus, is that the nature of this awareness is love.”
Pendergast is transparent when it comes to her subject matter. As she has been living in Kenya for the past 17 years, her paintings are peopled with Kenyans. She has been challenged on occasion by people who ask “why is a white woman painting only black people?”. Pendergast says that while she understands and to some extent expects the question, she is comfortable with her work because she knows that she paints from this place of connection – with her subject and with herself. Pendergast has always painted a reflection of where she is. If she is in America, her home country, her paintings will contain different subject matter than when she is in Kenya.
The paintings that I create are a direct reflection of the experience I am having. I simply see something that creates movement, stirs something that feels like California Poppy orange or a particular note in a song that brings forth tears of recognition. A giddiness rises in the chest and a “yes” that is curious…”
Pendergast’s paintings are generally figurative though not completely realistic. The figures are elongated and distorted, with small scale heads, huge hands and blocky bodies. It’s a distortion made with an accurate awareness of anatomy.
“Sweetest Light”
The works have something of Modigliani in them, whom she admits has been an influence. However, she says she was already elongating and distorting her figures before becoming aware of the work of Modigliani; seeing his work for the first time gave her permission internally to dive deeper into this stylistic exploration.
There is a sameness to her subjects’ facial features. This also relates to the “oneness” of consciousness for Pendergast. Conversely, the figures are simultaneously individual in other characteristics, in their clothes, their colouring, their attitudes.
It’s a facade that we’re separate from everything and everyone else when we’re actually not – it’s an appearance.”
Pendergast posits that individuation is borne of tension and that tension is rooted in survival. It makes you aware of where you are in space, of yourself and others as individuals. Individuation comes from needing to know what is around you and what may harm you. Effectively, individuation is a reaction to threat.
“Beauty of Night”
At the same time, she notes that we are having such individualized experiences, externally and internally (the paradox again), hence the individuality of the figures in the paintings.
Pendergast’s paintings are ethereal with a delicate interplay of light and color, but also a harder undertone and attention to line that stops them from being facile or mawkish. Her current body of work is drawn from people on the streets of Nairobi whom Pendergast approaches to photograph, and later to paint, with their permission. These may be mothers with children, street vendors or young people. The individuals are probably not recognizable as themselves. As always, Pendergast is painting in response to experiences that stir her emotions, aiming to convey the profound beauty she perceives in the ordinary moments of the world around her, highlighting the consciousness and oneness of all.