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Olivier Leger is an ocean wildlife artist based in the UK. His intricately detailed paintings and drawings tell stories of our ocean from around the world, inviting people to explore both the artwork and our connection with our blue planet. His art is informed by research trips, scuba diving and collaborations with international conservation groups, and has toured in shows across the UK.
Where did your path as an artist begin, and what inspired you to center your practice on ecological and marine subjects?
From a young age I found it easier to make sense of the world through drawing rather than words. Over time, the things that were on my mind – our natural world, our place in it – started to show up in my drawings.
That curiosity about how all life on Earth is connected gradually pulled me towards the ocean. We live on a blue planet: the ocean covers around 70% of the Earth’s surface, yet over 80% of it remains unexplored. The more I learnt about marine ecology and ocean systems, the more it turned my understanding of the world on its head. You’ve got these bizarre creatures, strange phenomena like underwater lakes and siphonophores – it’s like science fiction, but real – an alien world right here on our planet!
My work now is really about that feeling of wonder but also concern. I create intricately detailed drawings and paintings that celebrate life in our oceans, draw attention to the threats they face, and highlight the work being done to protect our blue planet.
You often complement your artwork with ‘behind the piece’ videos. Why is it important to you that your audience is acquainted with the context behind your work?
My paintings are super detailed images of ocean life and they’re certainly meant to be enjoyed as that! But also behind each piece there might be my first-hand experiences as a diver, or conversations with scientists and communities connected to a particular marine environment.
‘Behind the artwork’ videos are a way of sharing those stories. As well as being something to enjoy, the artwork can also be a doorway into a bigger conversation about the ocean and our relationship with it.
The UK has lost approximately 90% of its seagrass meadows… Your piece Ambassador draws attention to both the beauty and vital importance of this ecosystem. How did you first become aware of this crisis, and what inspired you to address it through your art?
Many people in the UK don’t realise we have seagrass meadows just off our shores, let alone how much we’ve lost – myself included just a couple of years ago.
Seagrass is a flowering plant that grows in shallow coastal waters. Project Seagrass and North Wales Wildlife Trust showed me how vital these meadows are to us all, and introduced me to their work conserving and protecting what remains.
I wanted to tell a story through a painting that could help raise awareness and reduce the gap between how important this habitat is and how overlooked and underreported it is.
The seahorse became the perfect main character for this painting. Again, many people don’t realise that the UK is home to two species of seahorse, and one of them depends on seagrass to survive. People love these charismatic, iconic animals, so by putting a seahorse front and centre, covered in seagrass and surrounded by all the life it supports, she becomes an ambassador for seagrass.
You joined Project Seagrass and the North Wales Wildlife Trust, visiting a seagrass nursery and helping plant seeds on beaches across the UK. What was that hands-on experience like, and how did it shape your approach to this work
Getting out of the studio and into a wetsuit in the Irish Sea was brilliant. I helped collect and plant seagrass seeds around North Wales alongside volunteers from the community. Seagrass restoration is muddy, hopeful work. It’s people on a beach, in any weather, measuring the length of seagrass blades because they care about what these meadows mean for their coast.
Being part of that process shaped the painting. Ambassador became a way of reflecting the biodiversity, people and places I’d met along the way – from the brilliant young people of the North Wales Wildlife Trust’s Ocean Rescue Champions to scientists like Russell Connelly, a PhD researcher at the University of Essex who studies UK seahorses and pioneering ways to detect them – because it turns out they’re really tricky to spot in their seagrass home!
There’s this haunting angel of death figure in Ambassador – subtle but unmistakably there, in contrast with the vibrant seahorse. What were you trying to evoke with that tension?
The angel of death in Ambassador is dragging a chain across the seagrass. Seagrass meadows are full of life – they support such beautiful biodiversity and provide benefits for people and nature – but they’re disappearing because of pollution, coastal development, and anchoring or dredging damaging the seabed.
Elsewhere in the piece you see hope such as advanced mooring systems – a simple solution that ligs the chain up to prevent damage.
The details in the painting reflect where we are right now – somewhere between loss and possibility.
What role do you see art playing in restoration and conservation efforts?
Restoring and protecting our natural world will require lots of different approaches. Art is one tool among many, alongside science, community action, policy and more. Science can tell us what is happening and why; art can help people feel why it matters to them.
It can help make an invisible habitat like seagrass feel real. Ambassador now helps share seagrass with lots of people – I’ve shown it on a beach, at a festival, at art exhibitions and online – sparking curiosity and raising awareness.
If art can help people see our blue planet and their connection with it a little differently, and feel that they have a stake in its future, then it becomes a small but useful part of the wider work of restoration.
Explore the details in Ambassador with the artist in this short video.
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