I was thinking about a couple of details I left out of my last post about my interview with Olan tonight.

Olan Montgomery is very tuned into people’s eyes and in his paintings he focuses on the eyes, esp in the portraits.  In one case Olan showed me the eyes of a portrait where all the details of that person’s concern with recognition and copyrights was shown in symbols reflected in her eyes.  I don’t think this is the portait he showed me but it’s as close as I can find on his site.

When you look at the eyes closely you’ll see all kinds of things.

Speaking of seeing the soul of person in their eyes, I asked Olan to tell me what he saw in my eyes.   Honestly, being a Scorpio, I usually try to read others and don’t want them to see into me.  But I think we all really want to be known as well (and it would be curious to see what kind of Portrait Olan would do of me).

Olan did not really want to say at first what he saw in my eyes - he sorta brushed over it.  Then I asked again – and he said I was afraid of dying without having really lived and done things I wanted to do in my life yet.  He said he could see, in my eyes, that I was pre-occurpied with that – and that I did not need to worry so much about it – that what I wanted I could have now.

We discussed a couple of other things about why I started painting again and Olan said he’d like to own one of my paintings – he liked them. 

Olan talked a lot about his childhood, his family, the way he was brought up, and his Mother, Eslye .  He’s very close to his mother and feels she is more charitable by nature than he is (which is saying a lot because Olan appears to be a very charitable person – so if his mother is more than that, she must be very charitable).  He talked about how his mother would take his sibelings and some of the orphaned children near where he grew up to Museums as often as she could and how her life was devoted to art – and is devoted to art.   He mentioned that his father had a stroke 12 years ago and she takes care of him but never talks much about it.  Olan also talked about his twin brother and how they took very different paths in life, his brother being in the army at one time, and really going after totally different things – and their orientation was different as well.

So, my first part of the interview was more concerned about the outer things -  but this part of my interview is more concerned about the inner part of Olan’s life.

Olan is also a cosmetics specialist and is called in for model shoots and that explains his relationship with M.A.R. Magazine- where his painting graces the current issue with a portrait of Anne Hathaway, whom Olan has met. 

In fact, you can see the relationship between the models of M.A.R. magazine and many of Olan’s paintings over the last year or two – it looks like his portraits, in some cases, grew out of his contacts with the models and his use of color and focus on the face grew out his work as a Cosmetics Specialist – which is a model’s best friend.

I would not have written this second post on the Olan interview tonight – were it not for needing to present, as much as I could, a fuller account – and while I did not take photos, which I could have, I focused again, on just talking and letting the conversation form itself – much as a painting takes form.

Another thing Olan did with me tonight is take the areas of my life and drew them out as themes as they related to me (ie: Art, time alone, 9/11, Job) – it reminded me of the way a web analyst would segment traffic coming to a website or page – but in this case, the website/page is me – and the categories are part of my life.

So among the things Olan can call himself – a psychic, a soul reader, a keen observer who looks into the eyes looking for the soul.

And that’s the end of my interview of Olan Montgomery – for now.