Interview by Jimon

1- Where did you grow up and how did that affect you as an artist?  I was born in Paris in the 20th arrondissement, a popular district in the North-East of Paris. I grew up and lived in this neighborhood until I was 28. I started in painting which let me to drawing. Being a shy child, I liked to draw to escape and dream.

2- How would you describe Olivier Cardin?  Shy, introverted, reserved, curious, kind, resentful, sulky.

3- What did your path to becoming an artist look like?  As a child I drew a lot, at the age of 16 I went to a graphic arts school. One of my drawing teachers, who was a painter and had a studio not far from my house, encouraged me to paint and go to see painting exhibitions. He introduced me to painters like Braque, Nicolas De Staël, Bissière, Vuillard, etc. From that moment on, I started painting on canvas. Then I went to the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris.

4- Where do you currently live and create?  Currently, I live in Haute Savoie, in Annecy, that is where I make my drawings and my paintings.

5- What is your earliest childhood memory of making art?  As a child it was not my goal to be a painter. At 20, I went to see my first major exhibition, that of Vincent van Gogh at the Orangerie in Paris (December 1971 to April 1972). It was an emotional shock, this exhibition overwhelmed me. I came home and told my mum that I wanted to do Van Gogh as a career. She answered me with humor, that this job was already taken! And that’s where it all started.

6- How did you acquire your style?  My style radically changed in 2010 and became what it is now. My two boys were very sick, the suffering directed my brushes, my painting, my drawings and my texts.

7- Is there any reality behind the characters in your paintings or are they purely fantasy?  I use allegory to paint reality. Painting is a therapy that helped me rebuild myself little by little, day after day. Painting and drawing are like the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. You leave from chaos, loaded with doubts, all useless things, ghosts of your past life, wounds, mistakes, fights between good and evil, sufferings, injustices, bad choices and more.  The more you lighten your path, leaving all the bad things by the wayside, those which weigh on your soul, which clutter your mind to lighten your burden and go towards the light so that life may light up .

8- What influences you as an artist?  Van Gogh, Rick Bartow, Soutine, Modigliani, Schiele, Rouault, Braque, Marc Chagall.

9- Do you have a place/person/thing that you visit for inspiration?  Suffering, mistakes, doubts.

10- When you are not painting where would someone find you?  When I’m not painting you can find me in the forest, on the edge of the lake, on my bike, in the mountains, in Paris.

11- If a movie was to be made about your life, ideally where would it take place and who would be the actor playing your part?  I can’t even imagine this question, I don’t know what to answer.

12- How do you describe success as an artist?  I don’t care much about success. There is a great deal of luck in success. Success is not a creative quality value, today some “artists” are successful, while doing things without soul, without interest, just consumer art. I prefer not to be successful but to be free in my choices, my soul, my spirit, not to be guided by profit, by the money of success, I am a dreamer. Success is often built artificially by a minority of people, success has no value except that of making a lot of money. In music, success rewards the quality of the musicians. In literature, success rewards good writers. In painting this is not the case, success is either due to chance or an influential man who decides that it is beautiful and those who, without any sensitivity, buy the same artist to be part of a same caste, of the same family, of the same social success.

13- Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?  music, music, music.

14- If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?  Rick Bartow, Van Gogh and Modigliani.

15- How would someone find you on Social media?  Instagram cardin_olivier

16- Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:

Art=feelings

Food=gluttony

Sports=basketball

Politics=none

Poor=close people

God=he forgot us

Rich=caste

Luxury=being able to fix all your mistakes

Sex=female

Picasso=ambiguous

Religion=war