OLIVIER CARDIN

Oil, Acrylic, and mixed media In parallel to graphic art studies at Corvisart high school, then at the School of Decorative Arts (Ecole Nationale Supérieur Arts Décoratifs) Paris. I came to painting through drawing and through the works of Nicolas de Staël, Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Soutine which guided my first steps. Painting has not always been my friend, it has

been laborious, difficult, sometimes painful, and serves as therapy. The colors played on me, I caught my brushes in the dish, impossible to hold them, to hold them back, so I left the raft of the Medusa, letting them smear with me. In search of the Grail like Perceval, utopia, El Dorado, watchmaker in search of perpetual movement or the philosopher's stone, an alchemist in the furnace, full of sores, lonely dauber, of colors and words. This singular painting is like Don Quixote on the stone paths, or like

a bottle in the sea. Paint or draw in all humility, the fragilities of humanity, the faults of the human species, the wanderings, the doubts, the obscure battles that embrace us, between good and evil, love or hate, all s 'tangles, black, white, color, nothingness, when our souls in pain go through storms and hurricanes. Paint the hope that shines in the matter, to emerge from chaos, from the The darkness of night. With a child's soul, on the white rectangle, studded paper or canvas, empty space always difficult to fill, a silent A place where I will take refuge, to protect myself and stroll, seeking the gesture, the universal line, the balance, the harmony of colors, or human or animal shapes, to share an emotion, a joy, a movement,

a feeling, looks, tears, a smile, an opinion… !, and find the universal alliance, that the rich, the poor, the fat, the thin, the good, the bad, the sick, the healthy can find comfort, a sharing, find part of their history, painting is a utopia.