Referred to as "modern before modernism was popular," Chaffee
was an artist who dedicated a lifetime to the pursuit of a personal
visual vocabulary, one that whould enable him to express himself
and his love of light and color as they interact with nature and
the objective world.
His diversified education, although rooted in academic tradition
and realism, included experimentation with Impressionism, Fauvism,
Expressionism, Cubism, and Primitivism. In a tribute at Chaffee's
in 1944, his friend, artist Hutchins Hapgood provides a glimpse
of the real Oliver Chaffee: "It is hard to separate Oliver Chaffee
the artist from Oliver Chaffee the man. His art bodily lifted
from his life, and symbolized in form. It is singularly pure,
childlike, and yet naive. There is in it the maturity of loveliness,
and that quality was marked in his personal life. Art may be defined
as the quality of childhood maintained in mature years. The child
is full of wonder, everything arouses his imagination. He is filled
with the fresh beauty and meaning of life. But as he grows into
a man, he is generally confronted with the problems of practical
life, which tend to kill the original simple vision. When the
child survives, in spite of all the experiences of man, is when
the artist may appear."
Much of Chaffee's life was spent in remote places, far away from
artistic centers. He lived a simple life, savoring the beauty
and the life-affirming forces he found in nature and all living
things.
