Artists We Love: Olivier Chaulieu

PHOTOS Siegrid Cain (Portrait) and Lynn Cheulieu WORDS Tracy Greenwood

When French artist Olivier Chaulieu first laid eyes on Lynn Kolver, a boeremeisie from the Garden Route, it was love at first sight. This chance meeting led to a life-long love affair, fostering Olivier’s South African connection and culminating in his recent exhibition at Slee Gallery in Stellenbosch. This is their story.

How did you and Lynn meet?

In 1990 Lynn arrived in Paris and immediately fell in love with the city. Two years later we met at a Sunday brunch and again Lynn fell in love… and so did I. In 2000 we decided to move to Auvergne, although we still love Paris and try to go there as often as possible.

You and Lynn run a guesthouse in the Auvergne region, near Vichy. It sounds idyllic.

The project of having a guesthouse came up in 2000. Lynn loves to entertain. In Paris we used to have dinners in our rooftop apartment three or four times a week, mixing South African travellers or artists with our Parisian friends. In Paris the flats are small and it was not easy to organise dinners for 12 or more people in a 15 m2 dining room, so we decided to look for a large house in the beautiful region of Auvergne, which was at the time still relatively unknown in France. Every summer, since 2006, we have hosted exhibitions around our indoor pool. This year I personally exhibited here for the first time. Lynn manages the B&B – Aux Jardins des Thévenets – and works from 6 am

to midnight every day. Help is very expensive in France, so we have to do almost everything ourselves. I did most of the renovation work myself. It took me 10 years to rebuild and create five bedrooms and a self-catering cottage from what was an old, practically abandoned manor house.

Describe your artistic process.

Only once the B&B was up and running could I start painting again seriously. Now that art is my full-time occupation, I usually wake before sunrise and go for a long walk, taking photos. I try to capture moments when light or fuzziness creates their own fleeting landscapes.

Back in the solitude of my studio there is a lot of work and long hours spent kneading my ideas and experimenting with colours. With a little luck I manage to find those things that evoke emotions.

Which themes are prevalent in your work?

Time running its course, but also all failures, weaknesses and passages are to me a subject of research through landscape, portraits or lifestyle. The subject is not that important to me, as in my paintings you can dive in and look for what will create an emotion.

Your first SA exhibition took place in Stellenbosch in February this year. What took you so long to exhibit in South Africa?

A few years ago I met Johann and René Slee and we began to talk about exhibiting my work in Stellenbosch. At the time I was preparing for my Skin, Flesh and Bones exhibition, which was on display in Oxford in 2014. The theme of the Stellenbosch exhibition, It’s About Time, is a sequel or follow-up to the Oxford exhibition.

What inspired this exhibition?

Vanitas, a classical 17th century theme that expresses a fascination with time, death, the transience of life and, of course, the importance of every single moment that can be exceptional and unique, and that will never occur again.