This site is a tribute to Bill Olive who died on Wednesday August 25th 2021.

 

Bill Olive was born in Enfield Middlesex in 1945. He attended Hornsey Art College, and studied graphic design from 1961 to 1965, where he was the editor of the college magazine, ‘Horn’, in 1964.

After working for a short period in the Tottenham Court Road studio of Ian Bradbury he emigrated to Canada in January 1966 with two friends. He worked for 14 months doing a variety of different work both in Edmonton, Alberta and in Vancouver, BC.
After more than 40 days of continuous rain and whilst working as a roofer in Vancouver he decided that the sunshine of Southern California sounded considerably more attractive.

Apart from living for short periods in San Pedro, Southern California, San Francisco, Miami and a small conurbation outside Cleveland, Ohio, Bill lived in and around Venice Beach between April 1967 and May 1970. After working at various occupations, including being a ship fitter in San Pedro working on boats used during the Vietnam War. He eventually started working as a silk screen printer for one of the most famous poster artists of the time Earl Newman. It was whilst working with Earl that Bill developed a passion for screen printing which led to him to produce a number of his own posters. These were distributed across America and one in particular, ‘Who Rolled Mary Jane’, can still be seen passing from collector to collector via Google.

He continued designing and printing his own work once returning to Enfield from 1970 until February 1975, when he took the decision to move to Norfolk and live in Thurne with his wife to be Marcella. Life took a different turn in Thurne and Bill ended up working in offshore exploration and production of natural gas for Amoco in 1979. He stayed with Amoco which was later taken over by BP and developed to become BP’s Southern North Sea Wells Superintendant, responsible for the integrity and performance of ~320 wells. He took early retirement in 2002.

Since retirement he had been involved with the start-up of the charity Asperger East Anglia and enjoyed some consultancy work. He recently started producing limited edition digital prints that depict the everyday objects around us, but gave them a different twist that gets the mind thinking about what the subjects really are.
Much loved husband to Marcella, for 46 years, a wonderful father to Marc and Simon and Grandfather to Jupiter.  Bill will be greatly missed by those he loved and many friends and colleagues.