Oliver Bedeman

Oliver Bedeman is a London based painter, he studied at the Royal Drawing School and went on to win the Lady Rothermere award for his work completed there. Oliver has since exhibited regularly in prestigious painting competitions including the BP Portrait award, Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize and the Threadneedle Prize, as well as holding many successful solo exhibitions, including Nature Boy (2017) and Brighton Highlife (2021) at the Fairhurst Gallery.

Bedeman’s paintings shift between familiar and imagined portraiture, existing on the cusp between real representation and fantasy, as he intertwines observation of the people and places surrounding him with the interpretation of song lyrics and fictional characters. 

Oliver transforms hints of the everyday into a dreamlike fairytale through his use of colourful yet gentle tones and integration of shapes and patterns, blending backdrops into his figurative portraits. 

In creating depictions of figures seeming to exist beyond specific times and spaces, the artist maintains an ambiguity and thus invites the viewer to delve deeper into his paintings. As well as his collection of paintings on linen canvas, Oliver’s creative practice is also bound up in the exploration of painterly processes, namely the ‘Hinterglasmalerei’ technique; applying paint to the reverse of glass.