About

Oli Vincent
Australian fine artist

Oliver Shepherd LLB, GDLP, DipLang, FRSASA
Fellow, Royal South Australian Society of Arts

I don't like talking about myself much. I find it awkward and boring ... too much like a job interview. But here, I guess, are the more important bits.

I was born and grew up in the Adelaide Hills. Ironbank, if you're familiar with it. Music was central to my life from age 4, when I took up the violin. This was followed by a bit of piano, then sax in my early teens, which I eventually ended up studying at undergraduate level for a couple of years at the Elder Conservatorium.

I trained as a lawyer at the University of Adelaide from 2004 to 2011 (taking a whole eight years while I swapped my other degree paths on a yearly basis). It was during those heady campus years that I really discovered oil painting. I remember skipping off between law lectures to see Peter Webber's film Girl with a Pearl Earring at the Nova on Rundle Street in about 2005. Watching Vermeer and Griet grind up the raw pigments, set up the studio, discuss light and colour - that's all it took. I was hooked.

From there I bought some oils, brushes and canvas boards, and just ... messed around. Over a decade later and I'm still in love with painting.

Of course, it's the things that happen outside of painting which are having the most profound effect on my art.

My oldest friends know I'm a romantic. My newer friends think I'm weird and unstable. I swing between extremes, internally. One day I'll be inspired and hopeful. The next day I'll be nihilistic and drunk. Over the last few years I have become increasingly impassioned by social and political issues both domestically and internationally. This 'rage' I feel is countered by the awe I have for science, for compassion and for the potential of the human race. I hope that I can express to you some of these feelings through my surrealist work. One day I should like to build a 'Secular Cathedral to the Human Condition' to house them all. If anyone would like to help me build it, please get in touch.

For me, art is the result of an innate drive to create, to improve, to express a love for someone or something - that's all it is. It's what happens when the soul finds its way out.

Art, the expression of what it is to be human, should be one of the three great endeavours of our age along with scientific progress and the assurance of basic human rights. Art shouldn't be scrapping for its own subsistence; it should be thriving and inspiring the creation of a better world. It takes imagination to see the future, and imagination is the realm of the artist. If you give an artist the freedom to create, you might just find someone who can show you what paradise looks like.

I apologise for how pompous that all sounds. But it's true. It's also 2am and I'm tired.

This may not be of any interest to you, dear reader, but if you would like to know me a little better, search for my playlist 'Painting by Oli Vincent' on Spotify. It's what I listen to whenever I paint.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed it more than I enjoyed writing it.

Oli