Blaise Smith was born in 1967. He attended Fine Art painting in NCAD. He then worked in TV and as a Multimedia interface designer. He moved to Kilkenny 1996 and took up painting again after a ten year break. He won the Cork County Council Centenary Commission in 1999 and produced Roadworks, a series of 26 paintings celebrating their workers, machinery, and roads. He is a regular exhibitor in the RHA Annual show and has been selected for the BP portrait Exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2003 and 2004. He has had seven solo shows in the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin. He has recently completed a major suite called "Weapons": a series of paintings of Guns and military equipment belonging to the Irish Army which was first exhibited in The Hunt Museum in October 2008.
Selected Exhibitions and Awards
EXHIBITIONS
2010 Moving Pictures, Molesworth Gallery, November
2009 WEAPONS, The Molesworth Gallery, February
2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1998, 1997 RHA Annual Exhibition
2008 WEAPONS, The Hunt Museum Limerick
2008 WEAPONS, Iontas, Castleblaney
2008 Blaise Smith, the Molesworth Gallery
2007 The F word, Contemporary figurative painting, The Molesworth Gallery
2007 RHA Banquet Show
2006 Blaise Smith, the Molesworth Gallery
2006 National Portrait Gallery, London, Bi-Centenary Exhibition
2005 Blaise Smith, the Molesworth Gallery
2005 RHA Banquet Show
2004 Blaise Smith, the Molesworth Gallery
2004 C2: 1995 - 2005. The Crawford Gallery, Cork
2004, 2003 BP National Portrait Award Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London
2001 Blaise Smith, The Molesworth Gallery
2000 Blaise Smith: The Millennium Landscape, Kilkenny County Hall
2000 Blaise Smith, The Molesworth Gallery
2000 The Crawford Open
2000 Roadworks, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen
1999 Roadworks, The Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh
1998 Blaise Smith, The Dolmen Gallery, Limerick
Awards and Commissions
2011 -2012 Schoolwork Commission, Presentation College Carlow
Roadworks: Cork County Council Centenary Commission 1999. 26 paintings
The Kilkenny Landscape. Kilkenny County Council Millennium Commission. 10 paintings.
Portrait of Seamus Pattison TD, LCC, for Dail Eireann
The RHA James Adam Salesroom Award 2003.
The James kenneth Kennedy Award for Portraiture 2002
The RHA Abbey Studio Award 2001
The Caracciolo RHA Medal 1999
The Arnott's Portrait Award 1999
The Fergus O'Ryan Memorial Award 1998
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award
Publications
WEAPONS, Blaise Smith, Steve Grossman, Jane Tynan, 2008
Blaise Smith - the Molesworth Gallery 2004
New European Artists, Edited By Edward Lucie Smith
BP Portrait award Catalogue 2003, Foreword by A.S. Byatt
BP Portrait award Catalogue 2004, Foreword by Blake Morrison
Artist Statement
I have spent the last decade and a half painting various everyday subjects from life, as well as portraits. I believe it is important to make a first-hand observation of the things that may go unrecorded by cameras, both still and video, mainly because they are slow and uninteresting at a glance. This is the reason that they suit the process of painting rather well. I also believe that a painting lasts a very long time and, leaving “art” aside, also functions to show what the world looked like to the painter. When we look at a painting by say, Vermeer, apart from questions of ‘art”, it tells us a great deal about the lifestyle of 16th century Delft. I believe figurative paintings that I make now will have the same function in another 400 years. That is why I paint in oil on gesso, because this is the process that has already been proven to be colourfast and physically durable.
Working in this way, I have worked with both Cork County Council to produce a series of 26 paintings of their roads, machinery and roadworkers.; with Kilkenny County Council to produce a series of 10 Kilkenny Landscapes; with the Defence Forces to look at their weapons and soldiers. I have also spent a number of years painting contemporary Kilkenny farms.
These projects are all linked by the conviction that they represent a way of life that will change long before the painting fades.
Bio And Statement ©Blaise Smith 2010