Marc Blake (b. 1974, Auckland) is a painter and photographer whose work operates between material process, constructed imagery, everyday experience, and psychological space. Emerging through a layered process of addition and subtraction, photography, digital construction, printing, and reworking, his recent paintings develop as unstable perceptual fields where figures, landscapes, reflections, and symbolic forms gradually reveal themselves through sustained acts of concentration and material engagement.  Blake approaches the painted ground as an active environment capable of suggesting imagery back to him, allowing compositions to unfold through continual negotiation between intuition, memory, accident, and control. Loosely tethered to fragments of lived experience and autobiographical observation, the resulting works occupy an ambiguous territory between hand and machine, landscape, ritual space, and world construction.



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 works held in the Arts House Trust collection.

A strong advocate for art as a unifying force that transforms and unites communities and fosters cultural discourse, Marc is also known for his influential curatorial and artist-led gallery projects and community focussed art initiatives in Queenstown.