Country: Spain
About me
Born in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz-Spain) in 1979, Manuel Olivas has been linked from a very young age to the audiovisual and business worlds in the province of Cádiz, where he currently runs businesses related to specialty shops for comics, board games, and similar fields. He is a member of the Spanish Association of Painters and Sculptors (AEPE).
His desire to explore new horizons and experiences led him to live with his family in Liverpool (England) for two years. It was there, in early 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, that his interest in the fine arts began in a purely casual way. Initially self-taught, and later through specialized courses, he started to delve deeper into different drawing and painting techniques.
A lover of figurative painting, his compositions are mainly inspired by seascapes and everyday scenes from his hometown and surroundings, capturing the essence of the Cádiz coastline and its traditions. A large part of his work focuses on the watercolor technique. Through his work, he seeks to convey the simple beauty of everyday life, reflecting the unique atmosphere of his homeland through the transparency and fluidity characteristic of watercolor, while also incorporating a level of realism that is less common in this medium and that makes his work so distinctive. Manuel paints his watercolors using water taken from the Guadalquivir River, adding a symbolic and emotional dimension to each piece, making them even more unique and authentic, and ensuring that each artwork implicitly contains a small part of the essence of the place where it was created.
Training:
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Online course “Fundamentals of Light and Color for Watercolor” by Gonzalo Ibáñez.
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Online course “Urban Landscapes in Watercolor” by Daniel “Pito” Campos.
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Online course “Realistic Landscape Painting with Watercolor” by Richard Thorn.
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In-person course “Other Aspects of Painting, Version 4.0” by Ignacio Estudillo.
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Online course “Introduction to Naturalistic Landscape” by Jorge Gallego.
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Painting from Life Workshop with Antonio López, Jorge Abbad, and José María Mezquita Paredes de Nava, August 2025 (40 hours).
Manuel has taken part in around 30 group exhibitions and has held 3 solo exhibitions over the years. He has been a finalist in several painting competitions and received an Honorable Mention at the Antonio Arnau National Painting Prize in 2024.
