Watercolor in blue tones with a cityscape and long shadows.

Ola Gustafsson · Watercolor Painter

Light, Mood and Presence

Original watercolor paintings by Ola Gustafsson, featuring landscapes, nature, and cityscapes.

In my watercolor paintings, I seek the balance between control and flow, between clear tonal values and open areas where the light carries the experience.

Artist statement

About my painting

I am a Swedish watercolor artist who primarily paints landscapes and urban environments, with a focus on light, value, and presence.

My paintings often start from my own reference photos from everyday life and my surroundings. I return to seasonal shifts, different times of day, and moments when the light changes the entire experience of a place.

In watercolor I work with simplified values, larger shapes, and varied edges: soft, hard, and lost. I want the image to be clear enough to carry direction, but open enough to leave something elusive behind.

What interests me most is the tension between control and letting go. When water, pigment, time, and decisions are allowed to work together, the subject can become more than a description of a place and instead carry an experience of presence, transience, and connectedness.

In my day-to-day work, I’m a visual communicator at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. That background has given me a strong focus on composition, simplification, and visual clarity.

Portrait of Ola Gustafsson
Ola Gustafsson painting outdoors in Sandemar.

Projects

100 Days of Sun

In the summer of 2025, I carried out the project 100 Days of Sun. Every day I took a photo of the sun in the moment and painted a small watercolor (18 × 26 cm). Each painting could take a maximum of 20 minutes. The project became a way to practice quick value judgment, presence, and consistent work over time. Something I quickly became aware of was timing and how much/little pigment I had in the brush.

Montage of all 100 sun images from the project 100 Days of Sun.

Examples from the series

Colorful sunset in July
Storm clouds obscuring the sun. Blue-gray, violet, and gold.
Sunset in warm orange tones.
Sun study in blue-gray and gold.
Colorful close-up of Ola’s palette.

Materials

I usually paint on Arches 300 gsm fine, Arches 640 gsm rough, as well as Baohong 300 gsm rough and satin.
The paints vary between Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton, Schmincke, Sennelier, and Old Holland.
Some brushes I often come back to are Escoda Perla, Korean Eo eo, Princeton Nautilus, and Chinese calligraphy brushes in various sizes.

Contact

Get in touch!

For exhibitions, collaborations, or questions: feel free to send an email or write on Instagram.