Born in Lyon, France in 1958, Christine Arveil became the first of her working-class family to enter university, graduating with a master’s degree in Classics and literature.
In 1979, she joined the studio of Luis Ansa, master of lacquer restoration and brush calligraphy in Paris. From Ansa she learnt ink-on-paper and lacquer-on-wood Oriental landscape painting.
She continued studying at Isabelle Emmerique’s lacquer studio, while independently experimenting with early European painting formulas uncovered through archival research. She wrote the first monograph of Jean-Felix Watin, artisan and author in18th century France.
Her philosophical and technical quest for the founding grounds of painting developed beyond color. For two years, she restricted herself to using stone-ground black ink, tracing single large words on white paper, presented in a solo show, A mots roseaux Paris 1987. Arveil’s work was recognized the same year at the Japanese embassy Contemporary Calligraphy landmark exhibition.
After this ascetic period, she reverted to colors prepared from dry pigments. Further delving into the European roots of painting, she reproduced medieval manuscripts “illuminations” and their process of creation as a performance act. Her replicas were featured in the 1994 Centre Pompidou exhibition Ecriture, and she would later teach medieval painting at the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.
Interrogating time and space in art creation, she met Arab calligraphers Abdallah Akar and Hassan Massoudy who develop a perception different from those found in Chinese and Occidental cultures. She deepened this understanding by working at the Contemporary Art Department at the Arab World Institute in Paris (1993).
1992-95 were years of outreach to the international art community, leading art gatherings that brought together musicians and visual artists. This involvement led Christine to an Art Management and Policies MBA (University Paris-Dauphine, 1993), and then to create the international festival Latitudes Nord. Fiction and non-fiction writing also took momentum, steadily occupying her early mornings, while painting remained nocturnal.
In 1996, Arveil moved to the United States. There, she integrated her life and artistic experiences into semi-abstract expressionist images for which she devised a unique painting technique and medium based on violin varnish. She had joined the studio of Joseph Curtin, luthier, for learning from the violin making world. Experienced with lacquer and the documentation of finishes, she brought an original perspective on varnishing musical instruments. Her research has appeared in The Strad, a reference publication for classical music, on the BBC and in lectures at violin makers’ conventions.
Since settling studios with her husband Master Bow Maker Benoît Rolland in Boston in 2001, she shares her time between her creative work and developing the music studio’s outreach. Her knowledge of 18th century French crafts articulates with her dedication to creative synergies in the 21st century. Their studios are a meeting point for intellectuals and artists of diverse horizons. In 2018, she is a partner to Rolland’s Legacy of Knowledge Project that envisions an artform, bow making, from historical roots to cutting edge innovation.
Christine Arveil has authored fifty short stories, a novel, autobiographical texts, essays and poems. In 2009, she completed the Volcano Project. This large-scale multi-years ensemble – a novel, lacquer-on-wood red paintings, a stone-drawings series, sculptures and autobiographical materials- unites painting and writing in one strong entity reflecting on how the creative process arises amongst adversity. Seventy pieces were installed for a six-week solo show in Portugal, Azores Islands, then at Boston State House, in 2010. In the following years, she collaborated to the hand-made artist book Waterlines with photographer Sal Lopes, contributing 35 poems, painted calligraphy and the concept of the book around Lopes’ photographs of water.
Since 2013, she has designed two building-conversions into studio spaces tailored to the art project. As with painting, she takes architecture and sculpture across the scale, from actual buildings and art installations to a single stone or flower compositions, meaningful to a moment. Whether she writes, paints, designs architectures or intellectual projects she is a builder of places that harmonize technical mastery and imagination. She brings installation art and process art to life-size.
Christine has two children Sonia Elise Rolland, International Law Professor, and Damien Boutillon, Anthropologist, whose achievement and creativity she admires.
She is an active friend to non-profits like Music for Food, Community Music Works or Community Supported Films, that weave social safety-nets through the arts.