À bon port... (Esprit voile 2022), 2022

Olivier Messas   Best sellers Emerging artists

The sea and sailing still inspire the artist Olivier Messas as much as he continues to paint his sailboats suspended between sky and sea in 2022.
This series started in 2012 is currently one of the most exhibited series in galleries.

[ Pushed by the wind on a sailboat... This series is inspired by a sailboat trip in the south of France, between the island of Porquerolle and Saint-Tropez... "I know the skies are bursting in lightning, and waterspouts, and undertows and currents: I know the evening, the exalted dawn like a nation of doves, and I have sometimes seen what man thought he saw! Rimbaud's "Drunk Boat" may have inspired this series where it is about travel and sailboats but not only... Passenger of his boat at the same time, prisoner and consenting, adventurer of sensations sometimes soft, sometimes strong, Olivier gets carried away by the wind and heads for the unknown. He is not afraid of the implacable vagaries of nature but, on the contrary, lets himself be seduced by all its merciful energies and intoxicated by the wind, water and time. His paintings restore these ancestral pleasures of being on the water, of listening to the silence of the sea, of dreaming on the little blue music of the waves mixed with that of the wind in the sails. But with this "Sailing Spirit" series, it's above all about life that we're talking about: we're all long-distance captains, when pushed by the wind, when it knocks against the sails and the sailboat leans abruptly at sea level and we want to reach its port. We are all reckless sailors, navigating rough seas, buccaneers tossed about by waves and dips, trying to hold on and not sink. Frightened at the thought of drowning, we maneuver, we try to keep control of our boat so that it does not overturn, because of too big a wave or too violent a gust that would shred our sails. Our life is a long sailboat that we must constantly bring back into balance... With this series, "Sailing Spirit", Olivier invites us to make allowances, not to be afraid, to choose the important, not to let yourself be swallowed up by the little nothings, and just move forward, on our drunken boat… ].