Where did this California "Old Master" come from? And why are those who see his work instantly smitten -- with his reflected humanity as well as his brush strokes? His ancestors in Finland several centuries ago took the name "Palm" from their native village. It could be said that not only did it take a village to make Olaf Palm, indeed sometimes he seemed like a whole village unto himself.

His mother came to Toronto from Finland as part of a troupe that performed folk dancing in native costume and married a widower with two older children. In Detroit, where they ran a boarding house, they left the by-now-only -child alone to amuse himself, and the boarders regularly exclaimed over the sketches Olaf kept busy with-- sketches he produced on cardboard shirt liners from the laundry. When Olaf was about 8, his parents moved them to Richmond and then later to San Jose, thus beginning his long love affair with California's North Coast.

He graduated from Los Gatos High School where he remembered whistling jazz tunes as he strolled the hallways. Graduation from San Jose State with a bachelor's degree in fine arts was followed by more study in Carmel, Hawaii, and Mexico, and a stint teaching elementary school. Then the turning point: Olaf went to Holland in 1964 to see the Dutch Masters for himself. His direction became clear--no Abstract Impressionism for him-- and with this decision also came the determination that he would be nothing less than a full-time artist. With few detours along the way, painting would be his day job and his real job from then on. By 1965, he had already been featured in galleries in San Francisco, Sausalito, Monterey, Los Gatos, Carmel and Santa Cruz. He was to become part of the '60s era of Capitola, California, where he lived with his first wife Eva and children Jennifer and Andy, and where he created a legend around his efforts at historical preservation there. (April 28, 1994 was celebrated as Olaf Palm Day in Capitola!)

Instinctively bohemian, rural in temperament, with plenty of practical life skills, he early on joined the back-to-the-land movement, and began his search for the perfect natural environment to suit his own nature. He found it first in Capitola, then on the Mendocino coast, where on and off for thirty years, he painted his life and lived his painting.

Beginning in the mid 70's Olaf's place in the art and music life of the Mendocino Coast was to become legendary. In addition to a steady production of work highly acclaimed and sought after, much of it based on regular travels abroad, Olaf lived multiple lives that managed to touch almost everyone in the community. Always generous to other artists, Olaf actively promoted the overall art climate of the community, sponsoring Art and Music camps with his second wife Susan, teaching voluntarily wherever he was asked, bringing music to the coast by producing shows and performing himself in jazz and folk bands. Meanwhile his work continued to be exhibited around the country.

Painterly canvases by Olaf Palm shown in galleries as far away as Hawaii and Cape Cod are well-loved for their classical subjects, lit softly but austerely, for their rich swaths of color and velvety shadows. For the ten years I knew him, he had been reaping the rich harvest of his lifelong, uncompromising vision: "The hands now know how to do it. I no longer have to give thought to technique," he was quoted in a gallery flyer, "I only have to think about what I want to do in the picture." What his hands know how to do, better than any painter I know, is to render contemporary subjects in a classic 17th century, Old Masters Style. He claims it was his intense, solitary study in the fifties, at the time when others were preoccupied with Abstract Expressionism, which led him finally to what he calls "an understanding of the 'old ones'."

That direction couldn't help but be informed by his lifestyle, lived with gusto and feeling wherever he chose to plant his feet..... his heart... and his attention.

Those of us who loved and admired him were lucky to have had his attention, even if only briefly. We will never be the same.

Olaf died at age 65 at the home of his dear friend Jim Larsen, his life celebrated by a musical procession of friends to the gravesite he picked himself, where the coffin he made with his own hands would be lowered to words quoted from the Finnish national epic poem, the Kalevala: "Jalleen nakenisen taivossa, rakas Olaf." (until we meet again, farewell dear Olaf.).

--Thanks to Dee Lemos for providing some of these details in her obituary for the ADVOCATE NEWS, November 2, 2000.