The French connection is invisible. Much as in eclectic Indian jewellery, sparkling gems, bright Swarovski crystals, and an assortment of glittering stuff like golden foil have been intricately and generously put together. Over a pale watercolour base, though. The concepts addressed are also Indian. To be more specific, they are almost totally drawn from Hindu mythology… Vishnu and his consorts relaxing on the Adisesh in the celestial ocean, and Dasara processions in Mysore, to name a few.

There is also the rare abstract work, but it is more an exception than the rule. Then you begin to focus on the intricate square motifs with mathematical symbols which go on to compose the base of the painting. You begin to wonder, what’s a Frenchman doing in the middle of such an Indian-feeling and Indian-looking work of art?
Well, Olaf Van Cleef is not your average French artist. By now, the 58-year-old has made over 50 visits to India, and has probably seen more of Indian culture across the subcontinent than you or me. Not just Agra and Kerala that most western tourists flock to, Olaf has experienced real India, be it in villages in Tamil Nadu or the chat shops on Mumbai’s streets.

A descendant of the Van Cleef dynasty, this man also happens to be a counsellor on high range jewellery with Cartier. But again, the style of his bejewelled works is both Carnatic and Cartier, perhaps more Carnatic. “India has grown into me,” he says.

Delhi to Pondicherry
“Actually, I visited India for the first time as a teenager way back in 1965, along with my grandmother. Then, when I was 25, I came to Goa with friends like a lot of other westerners,” Olaf explains. He moved on to Pondicherry, stayed a while at the Aurobindo Ashram and even got to spend time with Mother. “I found Pondicherry to be the most spiritual city in India,” he says. To Calcutta, he has another special bond, and considers the city to be the cultural capital of India. Since then, visiting this country has been an addictive annual ritual for him, and Olaf has been discovering a lot of India. And a lot of himself too, he says.

Designing for Cartier, Olaf had always been in the glow of gems, but it has only been for this series of works that Olaf has picked up gems and pincers. “I chose gems because, it has both light and colour. It was an experiment to start off with,” he says. Crystals also offer him a lot of choice in terms of shade. He sometimes uses as many as 11 different shades of a single colour in his crystal paintings.

Glittering mosaic
As for the paintings, they are like a mosaic; there are really no figures outlined in colour or shape, just images which crop up when you begin to detect a pattern. You also notice a lot of symbols, serpents and the like in these studded paintings. Stick-diagram representations of a human, reminiscent of Worli and other tribal wall paintings appear in some of his more abstract works.

Olaf used to paint as a boy, but had lost touch with it thereafter. It is only a decade back that he got back to painting. And it has been at a furious pace since then. The number of hours he puts into each of these works stun you too. ‘200 hours’, he replies when I ask him how long he takes to complete a painting. “See, I need to work with pincers and cut the glitter and stones to the right shape,” he offers by way of explanation.

Has Olaf’s works been inspired by our traditional Tanjore and Mysore paintings which too have gems like rubies and emeralds embedded in gold foil? Well, not really. The precious stones remain the only connection. While Tanjore paintings are vividly coloured, Olaf’s gem paintings are pale water colour washes at their base. Olaf’s imagery is delicate too, unlike the subjects of Tanjore/Mysore paintings whose huge figures hog the entire frame. In Olaf’s works, the background scenery is given a lot of space even when gods are portrayed, and this is perhaps the very factor that makes his delicate gem paintings of Indian deities so refreshing.

Curiously, Olaf’s ancestors, the Van Cleef dynasty had shared ties with India. A business family, they had been supplying kosher cheese to their Jewish customers in India even way back in 1857. His grandmother knew Raja Ravi Varma personally.  But India fascinates Olaf more than it did his ancestors, be it the spirituality or the colour of the skin. The dark skin, he feels, is a better setting for jewels than white skin. “Jewellery on dark skin is terrific.” But  this artist prefers platinum or white gold to yellow gold. And as it does to other westerners, the vivid colours of India fascinate him. Nor does he shy from eating from roadside eateries. “I love spicy Indian food,”  he says.