Olivier Suire Verley Returns!

“For my 2024 American exhibition, I retraced my intimacy with nature and, in particular, with trees. The Covid period was conducive to new inspirations. There are expanses of swamps and forests around me which have been my model and, of course, the sea which caresses my island. It is the power and the architecture, the movement, the wind in the trees, of the conifers, which are the basis of much of my work. This does not exclude the human presence which is so dear to me. The use of blue evokes for me sobriety, inner peace, renewal, oxygen, maturity, light.”

Olivier Suire Verley was born October 2, 1952 in La Rochelle (on the Atlantic coast of France, a historic site of religious war between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the XVIIth century) to a family of artists. His grandfather Louis Suire was a renowned painter (Olivier added his mother’s maiden name, Verley to his father’s name so as not to be confused with his grandfather, whom he cherished and admired) and his father Claude (now retired) was a publisher of art books and is an amateur painter himself.

Olivier studied in La Rochelle first, then in Tours with Jean Abadie. Moving to Paris, he also studied etching with Pierre Gandon, Albert Decaris and Caillevaert Brun. Of a surrealistic tendency, the themes of his paintings of the time were based upon evasion from reality, fantastic travels and the sea. During that period, the colors in his palette were dark and melancholic. He illustrated texts by Cliford Simac and Asimov for the publisher Louis Pauwels.

1982 marked a profound change in Olivier’s inspiration: as by a refining process, it turned to become a quest for the essentiality in life, leading the artist to discover the salutary power of color. From that time onwards, his themes also changed; landscapes, still lifes, portraits and again, the ever-present sea — the sea of Île de Ré — a small island off La Rochelle. He left Paris definitively and settled on that island, where he lives and works today.

Since then, his inspiration has drawn first from the colors of the holiday season in Île de Ré and on the Atlantic coast of France; then from those of Paris streets in winter or at night, and more recently from the light of Morocco and Spain. Today, Olivier seeks to meditate again on evasion, the elsewhere of our dreams, of our regrets sometimes, and of our hopes forever.

Always looking for new lights, Olivier travels often: Italy (Rome, Venice), Japan, China, Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Mauritius, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, etc.

He shows throughout France, Spain, in China, Japan and, in the United States, exclusively at the Addison Art Gallery. His work is featured multiple books and films.

Music by Fred Fried. Acclaimed for his pianistic style, harmonic depth and originality, 8-string master Fried is among the best of today’s modern jazz guitarists.