Anthony Oliver

Anthony Oliver is a British artist (painter, photographer and sculptor) living and working in Brussels since 1995.

He graduated in 1988 with a 1st class degree in fine art from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He won the Bartlett travel scholarship in 1988, awarded to a single student, to travel to and study a country outside of Europe. He visited South Korea and Japan but also Papua New Guinea, Australia, the United States and Canada.

His subject matter is an emotional response to observations of the everyday world: people, objects and landscape. In his work, he tries to evoke similar emotions in the viewer that he feels: tenderness, longing, and fascination for the world. A love of the complex and intimate beauty that painting creates. Paintings are based on observational drawings, his own photographic and film archive as well as anonymous films and snapshots found by chance. A multi-layered approach in the painting process means the image is further edited and changed: the original can be unrecognisable, virtually invisible or a ghost-like remain, an echo. The finished painting is a suggestive composite with an open-ended, multifaceted reading.

Anthony Oliver has had many solo and joint exhibitions in Belgium and Europe. His artwork is in private and corporate collections throughout Europe, the United Kingdom and North America.