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The possibility of an island
"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." This text can be found on the back of the canvas “Beyond the sea” which completes the series “Rejected by the sea ". These words illustrate the link between the two series of works, the crossover towards “The possibility of an island”. |
Faces to face
Olivier Dubois-Cherrier, interviews by Sophie García López.
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 excelled as artists. His trajectory resembled that of a child inculcated with the moral values of work and purpose. He was pushed away from what could otherwise have been his original course.
His mission accomplished, he became a Man, he analyzed and put aside these “moral values”; he learned how to paint. In the end, his work as an artist represents in a way his genesis, his source. He painted to liberate himself from demons of every kind. Today, freed from his past and his history, he presents the series of works “The possibility of an island”: a logical step in the continuity of “Rejected by the sea”…
The birth of a new Man? No doubt. An unrestrained interview with the artist, unbridled, and about to set sail.
Sophie Garcia Lopez: A brief retrospective on your exhibition?
Olivier Dubois-Cherrier: For three years, through the work “Rejected by the sea", I contented myself with observing the stigma of human behaviour at the beaches of the Dominican Republic, where I reside. After a few months, while I continued reflecting about the meaning of life, I was shocked by the ecological slaughter that comes as a result of our presence on earth. Rereading Michel Houellebecq's novel, "The possibility of an Island” at the same time that I was working on this project, brought me a reflection charged of a new, cynical optimism, deprived of any emotion: a “possible future”. The world will outlive man. Life will resume its course after human beings have disappeared. This, in itself, is excellent news.
Could we say that you paint love?
I sincerely believe that man's perversion is caused by society, that as long as we are alive we need love. Yes, I paint love; the one everybody aspires to, the one that everybody should be entitled to. The sphere we live upon is not a world of love, there are bubbles, and I live inside one of them. Love makes me cry every time, I consider this as strength, as energy, and I try to share it.
If this harmful effervescence of the world culminates with the end of mankind, it’s not important. The experience will have had the merit of having been lived. And I am happy just to participate in it. I see myself as the defender of human ecology and no only of that of nature.
Waiting for something? What do artists await for?
Expectation tends to impose itself. At the beginning I suffered a lot from it. Changing behaviours sometimes borders the impossible. However, expectation is always present in art. It controls everything. I’m now learning the “let go” principle, which is a concept of control that one has to acquire to break loose from the notion of time imposed, imposed by oneself and by others. For me that goes even further, this control allows me to apprehend without anguish the time that passes through us, our family, and life. Once we have achieved to domesticate expectation, we age better: We can foresee the future.
The roles that life has given us change, we surpass obstacles. I no longer wait for something, I have confidence, I can take it easy. As with my painting, I no longer rush through life’s stages anymore. If an idea of peace was the trigger of my canvas, it should remain so. It cannot turn into pure radiance and improvise itself as revolutionary. I paint what comes to me, what I can take the time to visit and appropriate, nothing else. My style is mine; I do not sell my soul.
Your intentions, your impressions?
It’s difficult to translate the sensations and the “hows”. When I am alone and at work at my studio, I realize that I communicate enormously with the canvas. In the end I believe that I communicate with my unconscious and that the canvas is only an intermediary between the conscious and the unconscious. With experience and maturity I learn, through painting, to know me, to accept me as I am and to love myself a little more. I have caught myself saying while I’m painting: “Do not overdo it Olivier”. Go step by step. “Let come out whatever must come out". We get back to the famous “let go”. What a lesson!
I love and I live in density, in depth, in richness; I do not conceive painting otherwise. At the same time I admire lightness; one day, perhaps, I will be able to paint in white?
Your temptations?
They are the unbalanced “hows”, the eventual concessions. Some mornings, when I arrive at the studio, I fear disappointment, frustration and even anxiety about the work of the previous day. Nowadays, as soon as I cross the door, as I turn the key in the lock, I try hard not to judge, to accept what has already been done and to start again from there. That helps to put a limit to myself, not to overflow the cycle, to fear a little less certain trips to the studio. Sometimes it also stimulates me to look in my mind at all the work accomplished on the last years. I feel reassured because I know that eventually I will arrive at the end of this conquest.
But what proves to be terrible in painting and artistic creation in general, it’s that this never stops. I’m never completely satisfied with the work that I have accomplished. It is an endless adventure, I feel attracted by an unattainable ideal that obliges me to take the risk of the empty canvas again and again.
Ambitions, conquests, quests?
I wish to follow the path of my creative work peacefully. When the work is finished and it has nothing more to say, it transmits an authentic inner peace to me. And when a painting pleases me beyond the advisable, then I get the icing on the cake: Happiness. This route is brief and long at the same time, and it will lead me to the very end of life. Everything blends, everything interferes, my life as a man, father, grandfather, as an artist. Dividing doesn’t seem to strike a good balance, neither the ideal. For me it is important to find harmony everywhere. I want to take advantage of everything. I have taken possession of my own history as a man, with all its adventures, I recovered my name, the notion of time does not frighten me anymore, I have already passed so many stages.
A painting, what does it mean for you?
A painting should summon me three times. At the first look, it must invite me to penetrate in the room where it is being exposed by means of an emotion provoked by its composition, forms or colours. Then, comes what I feel, deeply and independently from any given interpretation. Finally, I come closer, I seek what's underneath, what is hidden. If a picture does not reflect all this, I can’t feel anything. I feel the need of getting lost in the painting.
And you, what do you hide?
My dark side, which I did not accept. It took me an enormous amount of therapeutic work. But ever since I did an exercise of painting with another artist, my ego is much more serene. Today, all my aspects, all my faces, and my character, are more in harmony. We make colossal efforts to hide from the rest, and often we do too much to dissimulate. I did the same as everybody else. I painted as I lived. This is always the case, but with maturity this gets to be even more true.
In painting, superpositions nourish each other. What is on top nourishes what is underneath. It makes it richer. Layers, squares inside other squares… A square is a window, an opening. I exist in the hope of another possible world, in the possibility of an island.
My roots have influenced what I’ve become. The squares in the series “Rootings” are sketches of native huts. I was looking for a land to place my history, I recognized it and I was then able to part from it. I left The Caribbean soon, this time for good, in order to discover new worlds. I am no longer the mestizo son of a father and a mulatto mother; from now on I exist in today’s world, in life. A human being creates the meaning that he gives to his life.
The limits have been crossed?
Yes, I have also burnt my wings… Another life, a different stage. I like limits. What is possible is possible only today. I am at peace with the past. My painting has not ceased to evolve. My life is my work since 2005, no pretensions. Nothing is inseparable. My life is dynamic, moves, tries to make sense. After “The beautiful Promise”, far from the world of the dunces, I was finally reunited with myself. I am a painter who has taken his time to become one. I continue to fear reputation and therefore, success. But I’m working to overcome that as well!
Informal Remarks?
" I have decided to take the risk of simplicity and sobriety. It’s not going to be easy to negotiate with myself. "
Olivier Dubois-Cherrier, interviews by Sophie García López.
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 excelled as artists. His trajectory resembled that of a child inculcated with the moral values of work and purpose. He was pushed away from what could otherwise have been his original course.
His mission accomplished, he became a Man, he analyzed and put aside these “moral values”; he learned how to paint. In the end, his work as an artist represents in a way his genesis, his source. He painted to liberate himself from demons of every kind. Today, freed from his past and his history, he presents the series of works “The possibility of an island”: a logical step in the continuity of “Rejected by the sea”…
The birth of a new Man? No doubt. An unrestrained interview with the artist, unbridled, and about to set sail.
Sophie Garcia Lopez: A brief retrospective on your exhibition?
Olivier Dubois-Cherrier: For three years, through the work “Rejected by the sea", I contented myself with observing the stigma of human behaviour at the beaches of the Dominican Republic, where I reside. After a few months, while I continued reflecting about the meaning of life, I was shocked by the ecological slaughter that comes as a result of our presence on earth. Rereading Michel Houellebecq's novel, "The possibility of an Island” at the same time that I was working on this project, brought me a reflection charged of a new, cynical optimism, deprived of any emotion: a “possible future”. The world will outlive man. Life will resume its course after human beings have disappeared. This, in itself, is excellent news.
Could we say that you paint love?
I sincerely believe that man's perversion is caused by society, that as long as we are alive we need love. Yes, I paint love; the one everybody aspires to, the one that everybody should be entitled to. The sphere we live upon is not a world of love, there are bubbles, and I live inside one of them. Love makes me cry every time, I consider this as strength, as energy, and I try to share it.
If this harmful effervescence of the world culminates with the end of mankind, it’s not important. The experience will have had the merit of having been lived. And I am happy just to participate in it. I see myself as the defender of human ecology and no only of that of nature.
Waiting for something? What do artists await for?
Expectation tends to impose itself. At the beginning I suffered a lot from it. Changing behaviours sometimes borders the impossible. However, expectation is always present in art. It controls everything. I’m now learning the “let go” principle, which is a concept of control that one has to acquire to break loose from the notion of time imposed, imposed by oneself and by others. For me that goes even further, this control allows me to apprehend without anguish the time that passes through us, our family, and life. Once we have achieved to domesticate expectation, we age better: We can foresee the future.
The roles that life has given us change, we surpass obstacles. I no longer wait for something, I have confidence, I can take it easy. As with my painting, I no longer rush through life’s stages anymore. If an idea of peace was the trigger of my canvas, it should remain so. It cannot turn into pure radiance and improvise itself as revolutionary. I paint what comes to me, what I can take the time to visit and appropriate, nothing else. My style is mine; I do not sell my soul.
Your intentions, your impressions?
It’s difficult to translate the sensations and the “hows”. When I am alone and at work at my studio, I realize that I communicate enormously with the canvas. In the end I believe that I communicate with my unconscious and that the canvas is only an intermediary between the conscious and the unconscious. With experience and maturity I learn, through painting, to know me, to accept me as I am and to love myself a little more. I have caught myself saying while I’m painting: “Do not overdo it Olivier”. Go step by step. “Let come out whatever must come out". We get back to the famous “let go”. What a lesson!
I love and I live in density, in depth, in richness; I do not conceive painting otherwise. At the same time I admire lightness; one day, perhaps, I will be able to paint in white?
Your temptations?
They are the unbalanced “hows”, the eventual concessions. Some mornings, when I arrive at the studio, I fear disappointment, frustration and even anxiety about the work of the previous day. Nowadays, as soon as I cross the door, as I turn the key in the lock, I try hard not to judge, to accept what has already been done and to start again from there. That helps to put a limit to myself, not to overflow the cycle, to fear a little less certain trips to the studio. Sometimes it also stimulates me to look in my mind at all the work accomplished on the last years. I feel reassured because I know that eventually I will arrive at the end of this conquest.
But what proves to be terrible in painting and artistic creation in general, it’s that this never stops. I’m never completely satisfied with the work that I have accomplished. It is an endless adventure, I feel attracted by an unattainable ideal that obliges me to take the risk of the empty canvas again and again.
Ambitions, conquests, quests?
I wish to follow the path of my creative work peacefully. When the work is finished and it has nothing more to say, it transmits an authentic inner peace to me. And when a painting pleases me beyond the advisable, then I get the icing on the cake: Happiness. This route is brief and long at the same time, and it will lead me to the very end of life. Everything blends, everything interferes, my life as a man, father, grandfather, as an artist. Dividing doesn’t seem to strike a good balance, neither the ideal. For me it is important to find harmony everywhere. I want to take advantage of everything. I have taken possession of my own history as a man, with all its adventures, I recovered my name, the notion of time does not frighten me anymore, I have already passed so many stages.
A painting, what does it mean for you?
A painting should summon me three times. At the first look, it must invite me to penetrate in the room where it is being exposed by means of an emotion provoked by its composition, forms or colours. Then, comes what I feel, deeply and independently from any given interpretation. Finally, I come closer, I seek what's underneath, what is hidden. If a picture does not reflect all this, I can’t feel anything. I feel the need of getting lost in the painting.
And you, what do you hide?
My dark side, which I did not accept. It took me an enormous amount of therapeutic work. But ever since I did an exercise of painting with another artist, my ego is much more serene. Today, all my aspects, all my faces, and my character, are more in harmony. We make colossal efforts to hide from the rest, and often we do too much to dissimulate. I did the same as everybody else. I painted as I lived. This is always the case, but with maturity this gets to be even more true.
In painting, superpositions nourish each other. What is on top nourishes what is underneath. It makes it richer. Layers, squares inside other squares… A square is a window, an opening. I exist in the hope of another possible world, in the possibility of an island.
My roots have influenced what I’ve become. The squares in the series “Rootings” are sketches of native huts. I was looking for a land to place my history, I recognized it and I was then able to part from it. I left The Caribbean soon, this time for good, in order to discover new worlds. I am no longer the mestizo son of a father and a mulatto mother; from now on I exist in today’s world, in life. A human being creates the meaning that he gives to his life.
The limits have been crossed?
Yes, I have also burnt my wings… Another life, a different stage. I like limits. What is possible is possible only today. I am at peace with the past. My painting has not ceased to evolve. My life is my work since 2005, no pretensions. Nothing is inseparable. My life is dynamic, moves, tries to make sense. After “The beautiful Promise”, far from the world of the dunces, I was finally reunited with myself. I am a painter who has taken his time to become one. I continue to fear reputation and therefore, success. But I’m working to overcome that as well!
Informal Remarks?
" I have decided to take the risk of simplicity and sobriety. It’s not going to be easy to negotiate with myself. "