I graduated from Falmouth College of Arts in 2006 with a degree in Illustration. My paintings are mostly done in oils on board or canvas and my work is heavily inspired by 18th and 19th century history and the painters of those eras. I tend to work in numerable thin layers, building up paint around certain focal points. Themes are often centred around collapse and its aftermath, using classical ruins in an allegorical manner.

I have a strong interest in history’s societal and political swells and deflations, from which came the inspiration to start a series of paintings I’ve named ‘Capriccios’. It is a merging of my love of 18th and 19th century painting styles and my interest in social history and what it’s future may bring. The central focus of these paintings are ruins based on a similar structures in Rome and throughout Europe which may symbolise tragically fallen enlightened civilisations, or the reverse; self-imploded and doomed empires. Either way, they are scenes of people coping with what has been thrust upon them, for better or worse.

Website: www.oliverhurst.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/oliverhurst/