Guy Olivier - 'Smoking woman'

Original work by Guy Olivier 'Femme qui fume' Dimensions: 37 x 25.5
Frame size: 48 x 30 Hand signed: Yes, lower right Frame: Light wooden frame and passepartout Date:1997 Technique:Mixed media (watercolor paint and Indian ink)

Few Dutch artists can express the French and French-speaking feeling of life as it exists among the Dutch and Belgians so vividly and accurately, or awaken that desire for it among our French neighbours to the north. Mediterranean so blue, so blue. The same feeling, that lightness, that voluptuousness and that art of living of the South is brought to canvas by the Maastricht-born visual artist Guy Olivier. But not primarily sweet, sweet or as in a holiday brochure. With Guy Olivier it always manifests itself with an absurdist wink or with a grotesque exaggeration and almost always with a culinary reference or undertone: white arms of girls like boudins blancs, red pouty lips that have secretly already eaten the fraises-glaces sauce, pairs of eyes that rarely look in the same direction - the cleavage and rues d'amour are too deep for that, the ice cream coupes too creamy and seductive, and the company too diverse. You can't take it all in. Of course, with such an overwhelming work (Guy Olivier certainly does not shy away from the large format and intense use of colour) you cannot avoid looking at examples, predecessors and possible sources of inspiration. And then you must think of the drawings of James Ensor, with the grotesque heads and carnivalesque costumes, the café scenes are related to those of Otto Dix and his round and egg-shaped heads also appear in the work of Georg Grosz. And of course Toulouse-Lautrec, as the visual chronicler of Parisian nightlife. But what sets him apart from these artists, which is typical of Guy Olivier's work, is both his powerful tube lining - he sometimes applies a number of powerful lines directly from the paint tube onto the layers of paint that give the whole a great dynamism - and the use of paint in layers in a way that makes it look like fondant. There is great interest from galleries and art lovers from home and abroad and his work has now been included in the collections of major names.