olivier klompkes | l'artiste

N.B. : Pour parcourir mon site en Français, merci de cliquer ICI :)

Sunday, the 13th of Decembre 2020

I´m proud to present my new digital art work on Makersplace:
https://makersplace.com/oliklom

Wednesday, the 20th of November 2019

Hey Hey,
Well this one is a quicky ;) I'm back with some exiting news. Well since I last wrote, I did some new paintings over the summer which I have added to the painting for sale selection and I also started blowing glass again but this time concentrating on glass jewellery only. I have created an exciting line of glass jewellery which I'm pleased and proud to present to you on this new website: www.olivierjewellery.com

Wednesday, the 27th of February 2019

Hey hey it’s been a while since I last wrote, damn I feel somewhat ashamed but I have a good reason (so he says). In 2015 I discovered the art of flame working/glassblowing on youtube, I was fascinated and really wanted to have a go, with the lack of glass workshops in my area, I decided to invest in the basic equipment, a small torch, some tools, some glass and off I went..

Workshop ready to operate:

Grâce aux nombreux webinaires et tutoriels sur le Web, j'ai pu découvrir et progresser à mon rythme. C'était presque immédiatement le coup de foudre.

J'ai commencé à travailler avec le verre de Murano et à faire des bijoux et quelle sensation fantastique de fondre et de créer avec ce nouveau médium. Voici quelques bijoux que j’ai réalisés.

Quelques perles diverses:

This a necklace and earrings I made for my Mum’s birthday:

I also had a go at doing a necklace of our little dog (Maltese). R.I.P.

Soon I had the urge to try myself at blowing and working with hollow glass and so invested in some more equipment, a kiln, a bigger torch and lots of amazing tools of the trade.

Working with hollow glass, is a different ball game, soon I knew that serious dedication would be required in order to find myself comfortable working with this new medium, somewhat similar to learning to play the piano, it looks rather easy but boy that is totally the opposite. Still I went on and spent billions of hours behind the torch, having a go at glass ware, jewelry and water pipes.

Here are some examples of the glass ware:

Some of the earlier glasses

Some of the later glasses:

Here are some examples of the glass jewelry:

I also learned to work with Silver:

Here are some examples of the glass water pipes:

If you wish to see more of my glass work, please click one of the following links:
More Waterpipes
More Jewellry

The highlight of 2017 J I participated in a glassblowing competition held in Barcelona, where 10 European glassblowers were to compete to produce a functional water pipe in two days, I was lucky enough to be rewarded with the 1stprize (Public Choice)

Here’s a link to a short video of the competition: Click HERE

This is the piece I made and a couple of photos from the event:

Great photos courtesy of https://www.instagram.com/vanhazeing/

I was really happy with the progress I had made, my work was getting neater, but something wasn’t quite right…I’m a pretty stressed out person at the best of time, and the medium of glass is not the easiest to handle unless your best buddy is called Mr.Thermal Shock. So as I progressed so did the stress level, which I’m happy to tackle but along came a new feeling called anxiety, which became stronger and stronger, so instead of been busy channeling positives vibes towards the projects on hand, I was getting tenser and tenser, to the point it was affecting my life and my nearest and dearest! So although I really do enjoy working with glass I'm not sure this is the way I want to feel on a daily basis.

So I have decided to give glass a break for a while and develop a new range of paintings and see how I feel about glass later on down the line.

Sorry Lobo and Buddy but its looks like you’ll be on a break for a while, enjoy the rest ;)

Before I hit the paint brush though, I'm working on a project to make an online shop to offer high quality art prints of my artwork and after that I'll start painting again.

Thank you for reading and hopefully speak sooner :)
Olivier

If you want to be informed of my new work, do not hesitate to follow me on:

Tuesday, the 30th of Septembre 2014

Hello I’m back, about time I guess!

It’s been a good few months, but it’s so much fun to be painting again.

As I said in my previous post, I will concentrate on a series of painting based on “Love”. I also thought it would be fun to share that love across the border so that there would be love for all! I will therefore, with each idea, paint three paintings, one with a man and a woman, one with two men and another with two women.

I have been inspired by the way people looked in the 30s for faces and hairstyles but have used modern clothing and colors.

The idea is to stick (for now) with the night feel by using striped backgrounds and dark skies lit with stars throughout the series.

I love bold images, simply constructed and kept minimalistic, well that last one won’t be easy as I do not seem to manage to keep that promise, and everything seems to get busier and busier, but I’m working on it.

I will work solely on large canvases, 80 cm x 80 cm for the square ones and 80 cm x 60cm for the others. Its good fun to work on square canvases, it is actually the first time that I have used them. I love to work on large canvases; they seem to offer more freedom. It’s funny because It’s actually by painting “A lady and a gent on a boat” (which is on a small canvas 50 x 40 cm) that I noticed i needed glasses for painting small details, time is definitely going by!

I wanted to wait until I had nine paintings before I started a new page to host them on my website. It’s interesting to see how the style develops itself from the first painting “A lady and a gent on a boat” to the last one “Two ladies in a gipsy caravan”. I’m impatient to see how number 50 will turned out. Patience is definitely not a virtue that I manage to deal with easily.

Anyway enough said, I hope you enjoy this new direction I have taken.

Speak to you again. Sooner I hope
Olivier

Olivier in studio

Lil wink @ Alex & Mark , it was not intentional but a little advertising never hurts;)

If you want to be informed of my new work, do not hesitate to follow me on:

Thursday, the 21st of November 2013

Hello,

I have finally something new to share with you. After many false starts, I think I have found my new theme, "Love".

Below, my first painting named, "La Seine", gave me a lot of pleasure but I will not carry on in that direction. At least, not for the time being. I will nevertheless concentrate on the second one, named, “A lady and a gent on a boat”. I think that I will produce a serie of “Night time” paintings. I like that atmosphere, those deep shades coupled with the fact that I can play around with the shadows.

But anyway let the paintings talk for themselves.

"La Seine" (Acrylic 50cm x 40cm)
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"A lady and a gent on a boat" (Acrylic 50cm x 40cm)
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Wednesday, the 24th of June 2013

Hello,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to visit my website, I have tried to keep it nice and simple and as neutral as I could for an ease of viewing. I hope you'll enjoy it.

The initial design (from which I spent quite a bit of time) was very different from the present one but later I decided it was too busy. I still quite like it so I thought I'd share it with you!

If you click on the image it will open a new page enlarging it for better viewing,
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I would also like to start by apologizing in advance for my poor grammar and my lack of literature as I write, without forgetting my great spelling, or lack of it…

Now that said, I can move along, and make mistakes in plentiness (not too many I hope!)

As my website indicates (see the tab “the artiste”) I had to put my artist career on standby since our school in Burgundy, France,(www.maisonclairefontaine.com)was taking up the majority of our time but I still managed to do a few odd things here and there like this painting, which I did for the birth of my goddaughter, Anaïs.

The four saisons (120 x 50 cm – acrylic on canvas)
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I also did these two designs for my friend’s association; Llavors d’ací (seeds from here).
Its a great association that promotes the conservation of the agricultural biodiversity of Valencia, Spain

Llavors d’ací (30 x 30 cm computer design)
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Later I had a go at sculpture or rather “bas-relief” with the theme, “the musicians”, I had a great time exploring this media and will come back to it at some point in the future. I found this really relaxing as the media is very soft to carve, the down side is that it is not the most noble media by any means (breeze blocks) but as my Dad always says “never mind the recipient it’s the content that matters”.

Anyhow, here are of three of my favorites :

Le violoniste
(50 x 66 cm breeze blocks)
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l'accordéoniste
(50 x 66 cm breeze blocks)
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to come back simply use the "go back" arrow on the top left of your browser !

Le saxophoniste
(50 x 66 cm breeze blocks)
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Sculpture was a lovely experience, but I am eager to paint again,please don’t ask me what direction I am going to take, as I do not know myself . I am not too sure wheher I want to develop my latest concept further or entirely change the look! I have a few ideas but nothing concrete to this day.
In painting: I love the decorative aspect of things, I love patterns, I prefer a naïve style over a realist one, I love strong colours, I love humour, it plays a big role in my work, I like my paintings to tell stories, I’m not too keen on the serious side of a painting, I am not too much of a serious person, I can be, in fact I had to be during our 13 years running our school in Burgundy, as a happy director, hum hum…

So now it’s back to joy and happiness, but in which direction?

Good question,
On this token I’ll say bye for now

Oops, I nearly forgot, and since it is a blog I shall leave this paragraph here, where it is, as I am trying to narrate as the ideas come to my head or more or less!

Between 2000 and 2004 during the off season, we ( Patricia my partner and myself ), started a side project, we wanted to create a children’s animation, something different, away from aliens and monsters and crash bang wollop! Something that would motivate children to watch, get inspired and stimulate their artistic sides in order to reproduce the workshop showed in the movie.

The goal was to create a pilote DVD which we could present to production companies. Which we did but unfortunately after various attempts and some very promessing opportunities of success, "Arty Lotty" has not yet found life on the small screen.

Nevertheless this project was very rewarding since we did every step of the project ourselves.
Patricia, the concept, the scripts, the voices, the music, and myself, the drawings, the animation, the editing and publishing.

Anyway, we strongly believe it was and still is a great concept, and hope it will materialize one of these days! Below you can see the pilote that lasts for a short 1,40 min, but took us many, many months to realise!

Anyway, quite a bit of info for this first blog.
So, I’ll leave you to it and hopefully be back soon.

Take care,
Olivier Klompkes