Blaise Smith R.H.A. (b.1967) lives in County Kilkenny and is one of Ireland’s leading Figurative painters. In a wide ranging career Smith has painted in every genre – Landscapes, Portraits and Still Life, documenting the world around him, moving from one type of subject to another with ease: the haphazard reality of rural farmyard construction alongside the lyrical beauty of a simple cooking pot to a portrait of a school and its students. 

Smith has completed several large scale commissions and as one of Ireland’s most sought after portrait painters received prestigious commissions for many state bodies, corporate and private clients. He has exhibited in the National Gallery of Ireland in the landscape exhibition Shaping Ireland and his portrait “My Parents” was runner up in the National Gallery’s Zurich Portrait Prize in 2019. 

His celebrated group portrait “8 Scientists”, a portrait of leading Irish female Scientists for the Royal Irish Academy and Accenture’s “Women on Walls” Campaign, featured in a one hour documentary on RTE 1 and went on to win the Irish Arts Review Portrait Prize in 2017. He has had eighteen solo shows most recently a solo retrospective of 25 years of his Still life paintings in the  new Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. He lectures in advanced oil painting techniques, drawing and composition at the RHA Drawing School.

He has given talks about his work in the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Crawford, The RHA, Visual in Carlow and (naturally) the Electric Picnic. 

Follow his work on Instagram @blaisesmithartist