About

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« The truth is never in what it is said but in what it is perceived. To this end, when I decide to make art, I avoid saying things by using words for not wanting to violate the freedom to wander, ramble and constantly reconsider. »

Olivier Dubois-Cherrier is an experienced French visual artist based in the US, who has exhibited his work internationally. Olivier expresses himself through Land art, painting, sculpture, , video, photography and poetry. His Caribbean family background deeply influenced his path to art as well as the content he portrays in it, and he has lived a nomadic life for many years now. Typically painting with thick impastos and using additional materials such as sand, soil, grass and found objects, he composes works that contemplate natural environments and pose philosophical questions. His themes include time, ego and death.

My Story and Where I Am
By Olivier Dubois-Cherrier

I started to get seriously involved with art making in 2006, I was then 43, living in Barcelona, Spain.
I drew a lot when I was a kid, probably influenced by my (...)

The possibility of an island,
interviews by Sophie García López
(June 2011)

"Beyond the sea a land exists where I can become a Man
Beyond the mother, an island awaits for me.
The boundary between present and future is a beam of light ".

He paints the stages of adult life, along with his conceptions of the world, his states of mind, his desires, his love. Olivier Dubois-Cherrier was not initiated in painting at an early age, despite of expressing an authentic natural talent for drawing. Even though it is true that some members of his tribe (...)

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Rejected by the sea by Nathalie Hainaut
(April 2011)

"It is thanks to memory, for example, that the sense of identity does not dissolve during sleep"
Michel Houellebecq, “The possibility of an island”

It took three light years to Olivier Dubois-Cherrier to finish this series of twenty-one canvases and some 16 works on paper collected under the title “Rejected by the sea”.
It was in Barcelona, a city of art and history, that the impulse to paint seized him in 2005 He first trained in experimental engraving in a workshop led by the artist Nuria Duran, then in acrylic painting at the DaVinci Escola d’art in the Catalan city.
Led by a change of course in his life and an important acquaintance, he decided to return to live in the Caribbean, where part of his roots lied, and settled down in Santo Domingo with the firm intention of becoming a professional painter.

All the elements that would unleash this frenzy of creativity that haunted him since childhood were then brought together. (...)