Michel Ogier, 1943 ~ Visionary painter

Michel Ogier was born beneath aerial bombardments on the 19th December 1943 in St Etienne in France. In 1960 he joins the Bellecour print works in Lyon to learn the trade of retoucher in heliogravure and for sole baggage at that date “a prize for an ardent disposition for gambling”.

During this period, he likes Maurice de Vlaminck for his tormented skies; Bernard Buffet for his rigid lines; George Dumesnil de Latour for his purity and Salvador Dalì for his imagination. Even if he paints a few small gouaches at this time, as sincere as they were clumsy; he is still a very long way from visualising a path of creation.

"Nothing will be rejected, expelled. Everything will take part in the meeting, the osmosis. I think the edification of my painting rests on a yes! A yes, which will be the taking in consideration the acknowledgement of what is. You cannot deny anything about existence without mutilating yourself. Painting is for me the phenomenal good fortune of awareness. Painting not only what I am, but also all of what I am. That is my ambition and my research, which somewhere agrees with yours” - Michel Ogier