deja vu for two: a review

Yesterday I went back to the Madison Overture Center for the arts. The center not only offers Broadway shows and concerts but it also has three art galleries where professional artists can display their talents, and hopefully make a sale or two.
    The exhibit was called Deja Vu For Two and was a joint exhibit showing the paintings of transgender artist Nicole Bresnick and Todd Olson. Olson's partner, 1970's and 80's colt skin mag model and accomplished painter in his own right Lon Michels, also had a piece or two displayed. No pun intended!
    The theme of the showing, which I found very interesting, was that both artist took the same scene or object[s] and painted them from their own perspective. I found it fascinating to see two different impressions of the same subject displayed side by side. A friend of mine told me fairly recently that if you have two people looking at a coffee mug on a table they are not seeing the same thing. I did not understand what she was saying at the time but this exhibit brought it home for me. It also gave me a new appreciation for all visual art in general. I realized that visual arts are the eyes of the artist. When looking at a piece of visual art your literally seeing the world through that artist eyes. You are inside their head/ retina and no two retinas, except those of the same person, are the same. It's like fingerprints and signatures.
    Both artist used vivid and bright colors and both had a strictly modern aesthetic yet there style's were unique and undeniable. The one and only problem I had with the exhibit, and I stress the word exhibit because I found the work itself to be truly inspiring, was that the pieces were available separately. I saw these pieces as something like siblings in an adoption home. You really can't separate them because they need each other. They need to be together because they are linked and if that link is broken there is a since of loss.
    If you would like to see the world through the eyes of  Nicole Bresnick and/or Todd Olson go to www.nicolebresnick.com and/or toddolsonart.tumblr.com