EPISODE 22
March 9, 2022
Montse Oliver was born in the late ’60s in a town near Barcelona where she says, “I had a standard suburban childhood without any international glimpse whatsoever.” By the late ’80s she was juggling a career in finance, two small children, and when her husband’s job relocated to the US, she was extremely reluctant to go; life was simply too hectic to entertain the challenges and stress of a country move. However, she acknowledged that it would be an ‘opportunity’ for the whole family, and so she agreed to the move, negotiating a spousal work visa so she could continue working. But, several unanticipated country moves later, Montse’s international experiences inspired a career transition from finance into a successful business as a visual artist: MontseOliver.com
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Louise: Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I’m Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I’ll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who’ve made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom – reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.
[00:00:47] Louise: Hello Listeners. Welcome to Episode 22 of Women Who Walk. My guest today is Montse Oliver.
[00:00:55] Louise: Montse was born in the late ’60s in a town near Barcelona, Spain, where she says, “I had a standard suburban childhood without any international glimpse whatsoever.”
[00:01:09] Louise: She met her husband-to-be at 17, but it was another 10 years before they married. Prior to marrying, her higher education was in accounting and finance with additional studies in business. This was followed by a career in corporate finance.
[00:01:27] Louise: In the late ’90s, she had two boys a year apart. And with the demands of juggling the two little kids and work, she had no interest in the challenges that come with moving abroad.
[00:01:41] Louise: But in 2001, her husband received a job offer that changed their lives. From Barcelona, they moved to Atlanta, Georgia in the US. Montse agreed to this so long as she could have a spousal visa to work part-time. Also, thinking she’d be back in Spain in several years, her company agreed to keep her job open for her.
[00:02:05] Louise: However, in 2003, they moved from Atlanta to Zurich. And in 2005 from Zurich back to Barcelona, where she started taking art lessons, while continuing to work part-time. With their next move to the UK in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, part-time work was harder to find. So she focused on her art, taking more classes and developing her style and technique.
[00:02:36] Louise: It was when a friend bought one of her paintings that she realized she could have a second career as an artist. This was confirmed when she began to receive commissions.
[00:02:48] Louise: From 2014, there were additional country moves, including Singapore and Japan. And since 2019, Montse and her husband have been living as empty-nesters and for the last two years in Geneva, Switzerland.
[00:03:05] Louise: I’ve not met Montse in person, as happens so often these days we found each other on social media. Actually it was Instagram that suggested to me that she might be someone I’d like to follow, which I subsequently did after noting her profile tagline, “Every Painting Has a Story: Expat Based in Geneva,” followed by six little flags indicating the countries she’d also called home. But it was her colorful Pop Art-like acrylic paintings that caught my attention.
[00:03:39]
[00:03:51] Louise: Welcome Montse. Now you’re Spanish, born near Barcelona, but after eight country moves, you’re now living in Geneva, in Switzerland. And as I do with all my guests, I ask you to set the scene for us, give listeners a sense of the cityscape, perhaps the neighborhood where you live.
[00:04:10] Montse: First of all, thank you for having me and I have to confess today, I’m in Barcelona.
[00:04:15] Louise: Oh okay.
[00:04:15] Montse: Because I am spending some days with my son and then over the weekend, my other son that lives in Madrid will come for a long weekend. But I’m going to pretend I am in my home in Geneva because it’s where I’m based. It’s a very beautiful city, it’s a small city, a city lake, and a very pretty, but this is the second time that we live in, in Geneva. So this time we live in the, in the city, not in the outskirts. None of our kids came with us, and, uh, we wanted to have, uh, an urban life after coming from Tokyo. So we kind of rediscovered what it is to live in Geneva. We live in a beautiful neighborhood, very close to the old town. We have a beautiful Orthodox church, a couple of parks, and we walk everywhere, to the city center, to the lake. It has some landmarks, uh, that they are quite important for Switzerland, like the water fountain and a nice small Cathedral. It’s a, it’s a pleasant, uh, city.
Left: Montse in her studio in Geneva. Right: “Swiss” by Montse Oliver
[00:05:19] Louise: It’s a French-speaking Swiss city. Isn’t it, it’s right on the border of France?
[00:05:24] Montse: Yes. Yes.
[00:05:25] Louise: Do you speak French?
[00:05:27] Montse: I am uh, eternally learning French because, uh, I did some French at school when I was a little. Then when we moved the first time to, to Geneva, uh, I started my lessons and then we moved to Tokyo. I stopped the lessons. And now that I am back, I am learning again a second time. But language is not something that it comes straight away to my brain, even though it’s, it’s a Latin language, it’s very close to Catalan and to Spanish. So some of the words I pick it up easily, I can understand easily, but my teacher will not approve if I said, yeah, I am fluent.
[00:06:05] Louise: You’ve mentioned several country moves there already, and we’re going to get into that. And in the introduction, I quoted you as saying that you had a standard suburban childhood without any glimpse of an international life.
[00:06:18] Montse: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Louise: The first thing that occurred to me when, um, you shared that with me is this is interesting from a cultural perspective, because when I think about growing up in Australia, the geographic isolation somehow encourages a desire for international travel. So what was it like growing up in Barcelona in the ’70s? For example, what were the cultural norms of that time, particularly for a young woman?
[00:06:45] Montse: Around the ’70s it was in the middle of the transitioning between a dictatorship to a democracy. So, uh, it was a lot of changing going on. It was still a patriarchal society. Right. I think people were, uh, working a lot, long hours trying to just develop the country. I guess culturally, everything was quite local, it was quite, uh, from the area where you were living. I remember, uh, growing up near Barcelona and then local school and local activities. So I was doing theater. I was doing some popular dances, all these sorts of things.
[00:07:27] Montse: When it comes, uh, the time to do your holidays, um, we were going to our summer house up north, between Barcelona and the French border. Spain it has beaches, fabulous beaches, we have mountain, we can go to ski to the Pyrenees. It has a lot to offer. Traveling abroad it was something expensive. So I didn’t start traveling until I could pay for it. I mean, we had the comfortable life, but, uh, there, there were some things that, in my case, in my family, we were not doing.
[00:08:01] Louise: So within, uh, the context of that political and economical stage, did you feel that there wasn’t any encouragement at school or within your family to think larger, to think abroad.
[00:08:17] Montse: Not in my case. Uh, there are families that, that, yes, because I know friends that, they were going to study English to England. Some of them were going to, even to the US. For me that was not the case.
[00:08:31] Louise: Hmm, I understand. So there was that opportunity. But you, you went on to higher education and, uh, you completed a degree in accounting and finance, and then you began a career in finance. So there was obviously, um, some encouragement for you to have a career. And so can you tell us a little about your career in finance?
[00:08:54] Montse: Yes. I started working full-time and at the same time, for four years, I was attending evening lectures in our business school in Barcelona. So for four years it was long, long days for me, because I was finishing my day working in a golf club, a well established golf club near Barcelona, and then I was going to Barcelona to obtain my diploma in accounting and finance management. In the middle of this four years, after two years of starting the job, and my studies, I got my first promotion. So the investment time and money wise was, was worth it.
[00:09:34] Montse: I was responsible for the administration of the golf club, it was a very beautiful place to work. It was run in a very professional manner. We had our, our budget. We had to show all the numbers to the members every year. It was a really professional. After four years of working there, so more or less when I finished my education in the business school, I was hired for in another company. It was a multinational company, for their, uh, financial department to take care of the accounting of the commercial units that they had around Spain and Portugal.
[00:10:12] Montse: I was there working for 10 years and during those years I was having promotions as well. I had a nice career, uh, there, that was also stressful. I had my kids in-between. It was a long period of time working there. I grew professionally. It was also stressful of course. I mean, nothing, nothing is it’s for free. Right. And then it was when we had the opportunity to move.
[00:10:42] Louise: Before we go there, I just want to say that by the mid-90s, you’re married, and you’re a working mum, as you alluded to, and as you mentioned, you had two little kids. But um, you didn’t want to hear about moving abroad, which of course so many listeners can totally understand, listeners with, with families because of the challenges of moving countries, it’s very stressful with a family. So then what caused you at this time to feel so adverse to a move abroad? I mean, is it the obvious that as you’ve mentioned, you’ve got a career, you have a family, you’re juggling both children and working.
[00:11:20] Montse: I had my job secure, I mean, secure as, as much as you can consider a job secure no, but as I said, I was, I was having a career. I still could promote a little bit more there. I was working, it was near my home. I had my security blanket; I had the nanny, then I had my mother, I had my mother-in-law, everything was close.
[00:11:43] Montse: My husband was traveling a lot. So when I remember times that that work was stressful because the kids, they were sick, everything was very hectic. And, uh, and my husband would say, do you want that I say, I am open for a move abroad? And then you can consider not working. No, I have my job. You want me to quit my job? Whatever I had at that moment, it was like the important thing. He was happy with his job anyway. So why, why, why, I mean, we have everything. Probably, I am not that adventurous. I was not an adventurer at all.
[00:12:27] Louise: And also what you’re stressing is that you are really settled and you had significant support and security in the life that you’d created. Um, but then you, must’ve gone through a big personal transformation because, from having no interest in moving abroad, you go to living in Georgia in the US and then the UK and Singapore and Japan. So tell me about that.
[00:12:57] Montse: I go with the flow. Everything was very fluid. So when it came the time that, um, my husband says, I’ve got this offer. Let’s talk about it. I realized that it’s a very good opportunity for him. I am in a moment with the little kids, um, everything is stressful, but I realize that it’s a very good opportunity for him and at the same time, for me, it’s kind of a suffering that I am not paying attention to the kids. You know, balancing life and work with little kids. But I was not ready to give up my job. But uh, his boss said, just come here with your wife. Look, what’s around. Look for daycare options. And, and let’s talk.
[00:13:45] Montse: So we went to Atlanta, I had the chat with the human resources. And I said, I want to work. Don’t worry, we can manage that. We can find a visa for you. We can organize a visa. I didn’t have any pressure whatsoever from my husband. I, I was very grateful for that. He said, ‘whatever you decide.’ But I realized it was a very good opportunity for him. I was not that ambitious professionally, and I felt that it was a good opportunity for my kids to learn a proper English because mine was really, really Spanglish. And I said, okay. So off we went.
[00:14:27] Montse: It took something like five months for me to get, uh, the visa ready. In these five months the kids, they were in daycare for a half day. I would pick them up and I could do a very intensive, uh, English submersive lessons. So I improved quite a lot to be able to work. Uh, for the rest of the assignment time I could work there part-time. I was very lucky. I enjoyed really the work. Even though it was part-time, it was a quality job, in the sense that I grew also professionally.
[00:15:04] Louise: I just wanted to reflect that in discussions that I have with many international women who are an accompanying spouse to their husband, oftentimes the most frustrating thing is that they have to give up something and usually it’s their work, their career, in order to accompany their spouse, which leads to all sorts of issues perhaps in the marriage and in the family, so there was something um, I don’t know how else to put this, but you were able to take care of yourself as you considered this international move. You considered your, your mental, emotional, and your intellectual health, the importance for you to be able to keep working while you’re in another country.
[00:15:43] Montse: I was not ready to become a full-time stay at home mum. I mean, you spend many years, um, minimum eight hours a day, uh, with your head immersed in something you have been preparing for some years, you have put the effort. I was not ready to just dedicate my time to being at home. Even though I had these moments before moving to the US that, that maybe I was not doing the right thing, leaving the little kids with nanny, daycare. I mean, it, it was kind of a, a juggling moment, but I was not ready. Everyone has their personality or their choices and then that was me at that point.
[00:16:32] Louise: From Atlanta, you move back to Europe, to Zurich, and then Zurich back to Barcelona, and then you go through, uh, a shift in terms of your career direction. You go from finance to taking art classes and building a very successful business as an artist. Tell us about this period and how that came about.
[00:16:57] Montse: It’s quite funny because from, uh, from Atlanta, I moved to Zurich and, uh, that was the headquarters for Europe, so I also got the part-time job there. Then from Zurich, we moved back to Barcelona and in Barcelona I found another part-time job. The thing with, with part-time jobs is that sometimes you are very lucky. Then sometimes you are not that lucky because, uh, as soon as you start putting conditions of the time that you want to work, the quality of the job is not the same. That was one thing. Then the other thing is that, uh, when I moved back to Barcelona, my kids were a little bit older. They were not always needing me and besides working part-time I had a little bit of free time.
[00:17:40] Montse: I enrolled my kids in after school activity. And I just loved it. I saw what they were doing. I saw the teacher talking about art and talking about pigments. And I just thought, you know what, I’m going to join their adult classes. And that’s what I did. So I started there.
[00:17:59] Montse: In Zurich, I tried to paint with, uh, I have an artist friend. Sometimes I would go with her, like for fun. I remember, I just painted some fish and they were just, I mean, we would laugh about that. Do you remember when? Yeah, you don’t talk about it, that was not me. But yeah, it was me. But I thought for fun, I have a little bit of time in the morning of Tuesday and I’m going to do it.
[00:18:25] Montse: I started from scratch with charcoals, with pastels and I would show my husband and my kids and they would just, okay. Then I started with paint, with oil, and when I started applying color, everything changed. I just fell in love with painting, with the practice, with, with manipulating the mixing colors and even the cleaning. Everything, everything was kind of, I found it very interesting.
[00:18:53] Montse: And I just learned, I just learned how to mix colors, how to do some forms. I mean, we had some photos or some little models of, of, uh, vase or a hand. So we were just practicing. But, shortly after I started there, we moved to the UK. The kids were, um, 9, 10. It was the time of the global financial crisis. I thought that, uh, it was going to be a challenge to find a part-time job that would fit in my schedule of picking up the kids, because they, they finished around four. Also they have a lot of school breaks during the year. In Spain, it’s summer, Easter, one week, Christmas, but in the UK, it’s every quarter you have at least one week of holiday, summer is shorter. I thought who’s going to hire someone – I was in the south of England – it was not near London, it was not international at all. It was, it was local. I had my accent, uh, people were losing their job and I thought it’s going to be difficult. I focused on settle the family with a new school system, because it was the British system. And, and we’ll see for some months we were in, in, uh, living in one house until we found a final place to live. So we had kind of a semi move after five months nearby.
[00:20:26] Montse: So I just focus on family and finding a dog, because we promised the kids, because they don’t want to move. They’re like, no, my friends, my friends, said, don’t worry about it. So starting with a puppy. The first time we had a puppy, a Labrador, I mean, it was a mess. And then I focused on continuing my art lessons. I found a place near, in a beautiful location in the outskirts of an area called New Forest. It’s full of nature. And it was in the shed and the back garden off of an artist.
Left: Paco, the family’s Lab. Right: Landed #11 Connecting Codes, London, Geneva, Varese, Milan, Palermo, by Montse Oliver
[00:21:04] Montse: I joined the lessons there, we were five, five people only. And there is where I switched to acrylics, because of the smell, the place was small. And this where I really learned how to play with volumes, uh, it was very figurative what I was doing. Also I started to bring my photos and to edit my photos with Photoshop. And then from the photos, I would paint. It was nothing abstract, my brain didn’t work in an abstract way.
[00:21:35] Montse: We lived there for almost six years. That was when, my friend said one day, I want to buy that painting. I want to pay for that painting. Okay. And that was the beginning. For me, it’s a success when someone want to pay for something that I have created. That’s for me the success in my business. Yeah, it was the beginning.
[00:21:56] Louise: The curious thing to me is that you go from accounting and finance, which is so analytical and left brain, if you like, to painting, and that’s something that’s so fluid and right brain. And your, your paintings do have this sort of graphic, architectural quality about them. Do you think that your background in finance or that you’re a numbers, analytical person has influenced the style that you have developed?
[00:22:26] Montse: Absolutely. From a UK, we moved to Singapore and the first thing I did also was settle the kids again, but I immediately found an art place to go because that’s, that’s one of the things that I do with my painting. One of my subjects are about connections and it’s because things that happened in my life, people that I met in previous assignments in the US, in Zurich, in England, somehow come back later. I connect with them again and one of the friends that I had in Zurich was living in Singapore. So after knowing that we were moving to Singapore, I connected with her because we were connected via Facebook – that’s something that social media is so good for that – and I told her, look, I’m coming. Yes, when you arrive just let me know and I’ll show you around.
[00:23:23] Montse: So we met, we had lunch and then I was telling her I was painting. And she said, oh, I have a friend, an artist living in Singapore and she was also teaching. She said, let’s go to her studio. The very same day that I was meeting my friend, I met the one that was going to be my teacher for two years and a half. And she was an abstract teacher. That was something that I wanted to learn to just free my mind. I started there. She was a tough teacher on the sense that she said, I don’t care what you’ve done till now; we are going to start doing the color wheel. That’s okay. I mean, she’s a teacher, she’s a professional.
[00:24:02] Montse: I did my, my colors and I enjoyed it. And then started kind of telling my brain that nothing, nothing has to be so analytical. Just be more fluid, let, let go. So it was not easy and it’s still not easy, with the sense that if I have something to paint, I have to think a little bit of a plan. Sometimes if I plan too much, then nothing happens like I wanted. That’s also true. But if, um, I do a line connecting another line, there is a reason it’s not just because it’s five centimeters up or six centimeters on the, on the left or on the right. That’s still analytical even though, uh, if you see the painting, you might think, yeah, it’s a bunch of colors. No, there is a reason. Maybe after three months I don’t remember why I did it, but there was a reason.
[00:24:56] Montse: Even though, um, I was with her, uh, for, uh, during these periods, it was, uh, one of the best periods in the sense of I learn how to prepare for exhibitions. We did some art fair. It was a very nice community of artists doing the lessons. A nice group and some of them, I still have contact and some of them I have met again with them in Geneva.
Left: “Singapore,” Landed & Maps Collection. Right: Montse at the Singapore Affordable Art Fair, 2015
[00:25:23] Montse: It’s always that something stays there, what I’ve learned with her, but there is always that part of me that will look for a way to personalize a painting, to put like a location code that it’s meaningful for me. Even a postcode, a date, something that is related with the part of analysis: why I am doing, what do I want to show? Why do I want to say that it’s relevant to that person? I play a lot with what I call my maps. I, I put some airport codes and I make connections between the airport codes that I lived.
[00:25:58] Montse: Every year I have a commission, even two commissions, people that have had the sort of life that lived abroad, and they see the painting somehow, or sometimes friends that they come to my house and they see something that, that people with an expatriate life or experience they like to see on their walls, because you relate.
[00:26:17] Louise: That helps because as I scrolled through your Instagram account, I noticed that there were numbers, sometimes words in your pictures and as someone new to your work, I didn’t know what that meant, but you’ve just explained it. And the other thing that, that you have alluded to, uh, just now and, and previously, is that as a result of the international life that, um, you ended up choosing, you went along with it because you felt that there was an opportunity, your world has opened up, your personal transformation into the world of art has happened as a result of this international life. And it sounds like with each country move, it’s continued to enrich the evolution of your artwork. Do you think that the, the commissions you now receive are as a result of the international connections that you have made through these country moves?
[00:27:18] Montse: Yes. Most of my clients, I met them, or they are friends of friends, people that have come to my house, have seen my painting, and then they say, I love it. Can you personalize? I have a painting that actually was the first one I did when I moved to Singapore with my abstract teacher. It’s a three panels of three different colors and then there is a heart that unifies the, the triptych and there is some writing in it. I painted that for, for my family, was the favorite color of my husband and my one of my boys. And then I write something personal. I want to know what is there, but maybe I am a bit shy. I don’t want everyone to know. So I was explaining that to that person and she said, ‘oh yeah, I love it.’ Okay. Tell me, what do you want me to write. And, uh, she has something on, on her wall that has the colors that they like and it has a message that, that she chose. And then a friend of hers, in Korea said, I want it. Okay, well tell me what color; tell me, what do you want to say?
[00:28:26] Montse: So, yeah the paintings uh, personalizing with, with something. Many times it’s a airport codes, sometimes it’s uh, I had like a commission that, that they asked me for a cheesecake and I am not doing this. I did a lot of figurative before, and I did some coffee beans and they bought the coffee beans with chocolate, which is a painting that I really love. And then, uh, he said, do you know what my wife, she does some cheesecake that is to die for. Can you? Okay, yeah, I, I can! I am very versatile what I’m doing. I try to do whatever is possible and if they like it, it’s okay. If they don’t like it, there is no problem because I can always paint on top. I enjoy personalizing the things because what I am looking is for the person that will have that painting on their walls, that it will stay for a long time, that they feel a connection, that they feel something that they feel good that, um, they relate.
Left: Coffee and Chocolate, by Montse Oliver. Right: Landed #4: Coordinates, Airport Codes, Flight Numbers, by Montse Oliver
[00:29:29] Louise: That is has meaning for them.
[00:29:31] Montse: Yeah, I think that’s my objective uh, when I am painting, even if I am painting something that is it’s, it’s just to, to paint, it’s not a commission. I am thinking there is so much going on in the world. I don’t want to paint some things, I just want things that make someone happy. And actually my first client, that was what she said: every time I enter the room and I see your paintings, because she ended up buying more than one, it makes me smile, it makes me happy. I feel successful about that.
[00:30:03] Louise: I agree with that feedback. I first encountered your work and you on Instagram and your pictures, they’re really delightful and uplifting and positive. I thought this is just fun. So speaking of social media, if listeners would like to connect with you and enjoy images of some of your work, where can they find you online?
[00:30:24] Montse: I have my website that is www.montseoliver.com. So Montse is MONTSE Oliver.Com and then I have my Instagram account it is Montse_ Oliver_Art. And I also have a Facebook, but I am more active in Instagram.
[00:30:46] Louise: I will link to your Instagram account and your website in the transcript of your episode on my website. It sounds like those are the two main places online where people can find you. And I, I think I’ve, uh, talked up your Instagram account and it really is a great place to get a visual sense of, of your work.
[00:31:07] Louise: So thank you so much for your time today Montse, this has been a interesting journey through your resistance to move abroad, and yet this life as a very successful artist that opened up as a result of you moving country-to-country.
[00:31:23] Louise: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
[00:31:25] Louise: Thank you for listening today. And so you don’t miss future episodes with more impressive, intrepid women do subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel, Women Who Walk Podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review Women Who Walk on either Apple or Podchaser, I’ve linked to them both in the transcript of this episode, on my website, LouiseRoss.com.