Marie Christine Clavier was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1913 to French parents and lived there for her formative years. She returned to France as a teenager and began to study painting. Her work quickly developed into whimsical paintings of poetry and songs – harmonized in a unique and distinct painting technique. Her work has an impasto feel and a folk art, outsider artist sensibility to it. Similar in style to Maik and other fantasy realists who use animals, flowers and foliage in their artworks. Marie Clavier painted ro herself rather than for profit as she was quite independently wealthy. Her work is in a more whimsical style of Francoise Gilot. She exhibited extensively in the United States in the 1970s especially across Connecticut and New York, showing at various galleries and cultural centres. She had numerous solo exhibitions in the 1970’s- notably at the Maison Francaise in New York and New York University. She showed at Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris. She won many awards for her work including Gold Medals and Palme D’Or medals. In 1988 the prestigious art publisher Leopard D’Or produced catalogue book on her life and work – by this point she had virtually given up painting. She died in 2015 aged 102.