BIOGRAPHY

Blaise Smith R.H.A. (b.1967) is one of Ireland’s leading figurative painters, who lives and works in Kilkenny. He paints landscapes, portraits and still-lives, but describes himself as a documentary painter.
Smith has had many solo exhibitions including, most recently, New Irish Landscapes, RHA Ashford Gallery, Dublin (2023) and Still Life Paintings at Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2021). In 2019 his landscape work was exhibited in Shaping Ireland in the National Gallery of Ireland – a survey show of Irish Landscape since the 1700s.

His portrait My Parents was shortlisted for the National Gallery’s Zurich Portrait Prize (2017) and the previous year he won the Irish Arts Review Portrait Prize at the RHA, with his much celebrated group portrait 8 Scientists, a portrait of leading Irish female Scientists for the Royal Irish Academy and Accenture’s Women on Walls Campaign. He has completed public portraits of Dean William Morton for St. Patricks Cathedral, Dean Mary McCarron for TCD and the playwright Bernard Farrell for the Abbey Theatre. He has also completed several large-scale State commissions during his career: a 5vetre panorama of Waterford City (2016) and – SCHOOLWORK – twenty paintings portraying life in a Carlow School (2011).

Elected as full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2015 he teaches advanced oil painting techniques and drawing and composition at the RHA Drawing School. He has given talks to accompany his exhibitions in the Crawford, The RHA, Visual Carlow, and Electric Picnic.
His work is held in numerous public and private collections.