My name is Olympe Guillet. I am a fifteen-year-old art enthusiast and I have been practicing it for roughly five years now.
I was born in Paris on February 19, 2003, and have always lived there, which has proved to be of major impact on my art since I am able to regularly visit museums and art galleries around the capital.
I also am a quarter Venezuelan, from my paternal grandmother.
Family
My parents never really were the ones encouraging me to do art, it just seems I was urged to really start drawing during my thirteenth summer, which is when I started to be particularly thorough in my creations.
My father created a firm in the renewable resource of wind, and my mother is a teacher. They both are very supportive of my work — but not only them, many of my friends, relatives and acquaintances have been ordering me works. But I can’t seem to be able to sell any of those for I boycott the commercialisation of art, as I consider it a main source for the lack of inventiveness or sincerity which can be found these days in many works, in my opinion. It makes it seem art is simply becoming a trend and I believe this is reducing and profoundly desacralizing one of its aims, which is to share a candid message, belief, or emotion.
I am the youngest of my siblings: my sister, actively painting but also sculpting, will soon turn 20 and my brother just turned 18 this summer. We all are following a very diverse path in our studies which I find quite relevant in mirroring the rather free and flexible education we had.
Scholarship
I skipped a grade when I was seven years old and have been a student at the bilingual school Ecole Jeannine Manuel, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris since I was thirteen: I fluently speak French, English, and am learning Italian.
Next year is my last year of high school, and after that, I am not yet sure of the things I plan on doing. It will most certainly be related to art and design, but I still am hesitating between architecture, fashion, or art as itself. Anthropology also is of major interest to me. I am not even sure of where I want to go, but I am certain I will want to travel, while still keep my roots in the Parisian lifestyle which I profoundly enjoy — with all the snobbism and disdain that it implies and which I oh so enjoy!
My art
Apart from painting, I have been creating clothes for the past three years and I enjoy elaborating very eccentric makeups on my face — those are the two other ways in which I express myself.
I principally work on portraits that are not quite realist, and find most of my inspiration in Basquiat or Picasso’s works. I have travelled a lot with my family and generally try to open myself the most possible to new cultures: I am also very inspired by African art, and more particularly the masks, which interest me because of the direct immersion in the culture that they offer, but also the traditions that emanate from them and therefore the history which they provide.
I work with crayon, chalk, water painting and acrylic, depending on my works, but lately I have also started to use spray painting, and am working on a more street art directed style. I am also training to elaborate more pieces of nudes in tortured positions.
Overall, my aim is to focus on a very open-minded representation of the human body and state of mind.
Lastly, I try to involve some reflexion about our present societies in my works, in order not only to fight the stereotype of my generation as being uninvolved, but also because I simply believe art is an efficient medium through which ideas can be shared.
Other than that, I have never been able to exhibit any of my works, but I plan on presenting most of them during a private viewing next year — or at least it is my project for the scholar year of 2019/2020.
This art contest is the first one that I have ever applied to and it is very thrilling for me to present a work, as I sincerely believe it is such situations that allow artists around the world to flourish and expand their creativity, just as well as it allows them to share their works to a wider audience.
