Toska Charcoal Meditations by Olga Bologo

Olga Bologo is a self-taught artist based in Santa Barbara, California. Born in the Ural Mountains of the former USSR and raised partly in southern India, her early life shaped a deep sensitivity to landscape, memory, and impermanence. With a background in comparative linguistics and metaphor theory, Olga’s work reflects a quiet search for the emotional textures beneath what we see.

Her debut solo exhibition, Toska, will be on view at Gallery 113 from August 5 to August 30. Rendered in charcoal and framed in charred wood, the drawings explore the ache of longing—Toska—a word that describes a yearning for something unnamed, both distant and near.

“I paint what can’t be captured,” she writes, “the passing light, the breath between memories, the small moment that feels eternal.”