Omer Van de Kerckhove

Belgium

Born 1957

As a child, Omer copied images of animals from books. When growing older, real animals and plants served as a model for his work. Since 1989 Omer has been working as a botanical illustrator, specialising in mushrooms at Meise Botanic Garden (situated near Brussels). His watercolour technique evolved from mixing pigments applied in a few layers to painting with pure pigments in many, often more than 20 layers on top of each other and each time painted to life and at full size.