The reflections of life through his eyes are wonderful images to live with. We believe him to be an exquisite colorist. Our thoughts and eyes are always drawn by his sense of flowing colored layers of abstraction that both pull and shift the focus of the work: patterns overlaid onto a subject become their own quilt and can lift, focus and deepen our mood. The composition is in itself one layer of many and transports the viewer to other places. We love Olivier's variety of color, light and mood that compound the skill of his work. It is always exciting to visit the layered-spaces that he inhabits and we look forward to his continued progress through the world abstract of pattern, color and light embodied in his paintings.
— Keith Carvounis & Barbara Braman

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 (Oliver 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 Assimov 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 eleswhere of our dreams, of our regrets sometimes, and of our hopes forever.

Always looking for new lights, Olivier travels often: Italy (Rome, Venice), Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Mauritius...

He has shown in Paris, Lyon and Tokyo. His work is featured in the beautiful book, Ailleurs.

Artist's Statement:
It was with excitement mingled with apprehension when I came to the Cape four years ago, at Helen Addison’s invitation, to show my work to her many collectors — or should I say her friends, since Helen has the rare gift to make her clients feel at home in her Gallery.

I was overwhelmed with joy by the warm welcome my wife Anne-Marie, my long-time friend and agent Jean-Philippe Ricard, his own wife Évelyne, and myself received here —not to mention the added pleasure to see my paintings appreciated (and bought!) by many connoisseurs. These feelings were renewed two years ago at my second show on Route 28 and at the splendid party O.J. and John Murphy gave for us on that occasion.
Today, I feel the same excitement as this third show is approaching! It is always a great joy for an artist, even for seasoned one, to meet the understanding of new people, as if making new friends; this is particularly true for me with the American people, thanks to Helen Addison’s dedicated energy.

“Somewhere else” could best define Olivier’s artistic approach.

His painting has always proceeded from his own life: the permanent evolution of his feelings, the successive stages of his personal quest for identity, the people he meets: in each of his works, all that can be found.

Along the years, he has slowly left behind the anecdotic side of his early watercolors and oil paintings, which portrayed with a talent for romance and a discreet emotion his beloved Ile de Ré, Venice, or the Languedoc; now, he reaches a deeper and more subtle meditation, based on evasion towards the “somewhere else” that everyone of us is longing for, that “somewhere else” full of dreams, of regrets sometimes, of hopes ever and ever.

Olivier Suire Verley is a solar painter, craving for the vast spectacle of life and eager to discover new atmospheres, new sceneries: in each of them, he finds a teaching and, as an alchemist, transmutes it in nuggets of pure joy for our eye and mind.

Served by a masterly craftsmanship, this captivating stance allows Olivier to transport us in a universe of ochres, yellows, and reds mixed with subtle dark nuances — never black! asserted with an evident pleasure: volumes and light captivate, trouble and reassure us, all at the same time. Colorful figures stand in the center or merely cross the painting, dreamlike, unreal, but every one of them a strong presence.

We hear their steps drifting way, their laughs and their cries fading in the distance; lilac shades are stretching in the evening light: time to go home, one can smell the smokes from the village, the harbor, or the camp, near enough for us to feel its presence on the edge of the painting.

Somewhere else also means the circus ring, with horses, acrobats, and a tragic, hapless clown; under the floodlights, the show goes on, blazing with light, enchanting, magic.

Making us think, making us see, the artist today makes us dream, far away from any anecdote: “a vagrant, his fists in his pockets with holes in them”, Olivier Suire Verley has just boarded the unknown shores, just made the discoveries that he offers to share with us: intense and captivating, they will live in our heart for a very long time.
— © Antoine Moissac, 2007 (translation by J.Ph. Ricard)

About his beloved Île de Ré:

“For many a visitor, the name “Ile de Ré” brings up visions of clear, watery colors; on the contrary, I see in these sceneries of sea and rural landscapes some very strong contrasts between the exuberant greens of the vegetation, the blue limpidity of the skies, and the brownish yellowness of the rocky paths: all these violent tonalities splash my face like sprays sequined by salt. Clusters of salt marshes at the sharp northwest end of the island remain one of my preferred themes of paintings; nearly abandoned nowadays, they provide an ideal shelter for migratory birds. Water canals form with the marshes a patchwork of mirrors separated by stretches of dry earth and parched grass.”