The sea and sailing still inspire me and I will continue to paint my sailboats suspended between sky and sea in 2016. This series started in 2012 and will take a much more abstract direction this year... [ Wind-driven on a sailboat This series is inspired by a sailing trip in the south of France, between the island of Porquerolle and Saint-Tropez..." I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts, and the surf and the currents: I know the evening, the exalted dawn, and a people of doves, and I have sometimes seen what man thought he saw! "Rimbaud's "Le bateau drunk" may have inspired this series where it is about travel and sailing boats but not only... Passenger in his boat at the same time, prisoner and willing, adventurer of sensations sometimes soft, sometimes strong, Olivier lets himself be carried away by the wind and sets sail towards the unknown. He is not afraid of the implacable vagaries of nature but, on the contrary, he lets himself be seduced by all its merciful energies and intoxicated by the wind, the water and the time. His paintings reproduce the ancestral pleasures of being on the water, of listening to the silence of the sea, of dreaming on the little blue music of the waves mixed with that of the wind in the sails. But with this "Sailing Spirit" series, it is above all about life: we are all long-distance captains, when pushed by the wind, when it hits the sails and the yacht leans abruptly at sea level and we want to reach its port. We are all reckless sailors, sailing in rough seas, freebooters jostled by waves and hollows, trying to hang on and not sink. Scared at the thought of drowning, we manoeuvre, we try to keep control of our boat so that it doesn't overturn, because of too big a wave or too violent a gust of wind that would tear our sails. Our life is a long sailboat that we have to constantly rebalance...With this series, " Esprit voile ", Olivier, invites us to make the difference, not to be afraid, to choose what is important, not to let ourselves be swallowed up by the little things, and just move forward, on our drunken boat...Written by W. Willebrod Wegimont. ]
