Belgian painter, Olivier Dumont was born on the 5th February 1971 in Bunia (Congo) where his parents were working as teachers. A few months later, they came back to Belgium where he had a good childhood with his three brothers.
Unfortunately, when he was twelve, he was the victim of a very serious road accident and became incapable of continuing with the school. An experience as a worker was also a failure. His adolescence was a very difficult period of depression and revolt. He thought that nobody could help him and he tried to kill himself several times.
Ten years after this accident, because he had nothing to do one day, he took a ball-pen, a piece of paper and began to draw something. He immediately felt a real pleasure, an impression of release. Without a personal decision, something was running out of his head onto the paper. So, he had found the best way for him to tell, to express the weight of his sufferings and frustrations.
After that, he began to draw and paint hundreds and hundreds productions with frenzy, without any experience in theoretical and technical art. He has worked with oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolour, markers…His counsellor: his supplier of equipment in the shop, between two customers. His studies: his visits of many interesting museums with his family.
Since 1999, he has taken part in around thirty exhibitions in Belgium (in particular in Brussels, Place du Sablon) and in France (in particular in Nancy and Paris).
His style is very personal: in his world, the child lives together with the adult, the light follows darkness but, year after year, the pictures are more and more coloured. His paintings can’t be ranked among “art brut” or ”art naïf” because this reading of life is very far from that . On the contrary, the painter is extremely lucid and very often shows a critical and humoristic view of our way of life.
The artist makes the crowds defile, plenty of masks are questioning us : an art that tells, cries, laughs, sounds. Instinctive producer director, Olivier Dumont places his actors like puppets with an incessant search of stability.
If we absolutely wanted to label this original approach, we ‘d have to think of the “néo-impressionnisme” because of the strength of the movement, the “snapshot” of the execution, the palpitations that emerge from the compositions.
And that won’t stop, because we never stop breathing. For Olivier Dumont, painting is a vital and absolute necessity.

For more information on this Artist please Email Us.