Marc Blake (b. Auckland, New Zealand) is a painter whose work explores the relationship between lived experience, memory and the ways images and moments are carried through time. Over more than two decades, Blake has developed a highly individual approach to painting in which multiple processes are integrated into an evolving cycle of making, altering and reconstructing.

Drawing upon personal histories, extensive photographic archives and observations gathered across different places and periods of his life, Blake creates paintings that exist between recollection, contemplation and invention. Figures, interior and exterior spaces are transformed through layers of image, surface and gesture, becoming less representations of specific moments than reflections on how experiences are remembered, reshaped and continuously evolve.

Influenced by both Asian and Western art and culture, and informed by the evolving language of contemporary image-making, Blake’s work remains deeply connected to the physical possibilities of painting. His works explore the tension between permanence and change, the remembered and the imagined, and the ways images shape how we experience and attempt to preserve the world around us.

Currently based in Central Otago, Blake’s work reflects an ongoing accumulation of experiences from living in New Zealand, Japan and Australia, together with close familial ties to Korea. While figures, landscapes and domestic spaces drawn from everyday moments often appear, they function less as definitive subjects than as entry points into broader, shared questions of memory, perception and human connection.

Blake has been a recipient of and multiple finalist in several national awards, including winning the Supreme Award at the 2023 Craigs Aspiring Art Prize. Living in Japan from 2002-2006, Marc completed a studio residency and exhibition at BankART NYK Yokohama, as well as exhibiting at Arts Council Koganecho and the Kyoto Cultural Museum. His work has also been shown at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and The Dowse Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include “On Canvas”, Aotearoa Art Fair (2023), ‘Like Pleasures of the World”, Alexandra Museum (2023) and “Alta”, Te Atamira, (2025). Marc’s work is held in numerous collections in New Zealand and abroad, including the Craigs Investment Partners collection and 16 of his works held in the Arts House Trust collection.