Olivier Van Neste, I am a Belgian watercolor painter, born 1975 in Ostend—a coastal town that shaped my connection to the sea.

I studied graphic design and spent years working visually before watercolor found me.

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Many mornings at dawn, I'm in the water. I surf, I watch the sky, and sometimes between waves I am working out the mixes, the shapes, the light. It's become my daily conversation with water and atmosphere.

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Watercolor found me because it's an extension of that practice. It works with water, the way surfing does. There's the same immediacy, the same surrender—you commit to the mark, trust the flow, and discover what emerges.

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I travel to remote places: empty coastlines, fishing villages, beaches where lush nature meets turquoise water. Timor. Quiet roads. Islands in the distance. These places have a purity that stops me—where simplicity and nature are in harmony. I sit with them, observe the light, and that becomes the seed of a painting.

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I'm not interested in capturing every detail. I want to distill what moved me about a place into its essence—the light, the atmosphere, the feeling of being there at that moment. So when you look at one of my paintings, you can step into that dawn or that horizon with me.