Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1970, Olivier was apprenticed to his ailing father from an early age. He studied calligraphy, printmaking, painting, and photography while helping to build and rebuild a studio that evolved as his father’s health deteriorated. This formative experience provided technical training, but little preparation for formal academia.

In 1989 he enrolled at Massachusetts College of Art, but quickly dropped out. What followed was a prolonged tension between the sense of duty to fulfill his father’s path and a desire to define his own. In the 1990s he worked as a housewares designer at Industry, Boston. From 1998 to 2000 he worked with menswear designer Daniel Cleary in Provincetown, MA as a design assistant. He worked alongside Juan Puntes in the early 2000s at the non-profit gallery, White Box in Manhattan as a gallery assistant and art handler. 

While selling his work on the sidewalks of Soho he soon developed a following. A year at the Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami in 2005 led to representation by TEW Galleries in Atlanta, Georgia which thrived until parenthood led him to pause his career in 2011.

With renewed purpose and direction he has been showing across the US while raising two daughters with his two partners in Woodstock, NY.