Virginie Martin Blaise, Contemporary Figurative Artist
Fine artist
French artist, born in Strasbourg, she has been living in Barcelona since 2012.
Art has always been part of her life.
Her inspiration is very versatile, and she admires figurative artists like Velasquez or Sargent, but also abstract artists like Zao Wou Ki.
Her creation takes its source in direct observation, whether she’s painting a landscape or the portrait of a sitting model. She enjoys painting from life and plein air sessions, and uses this experience when she works on bigger scale landscapes in her studio, or commission portraits with photo references. Her purpose is to use the specific quality of each medium (oil, watercolour, ink) to pass on in her work the beauty she sees in her subject.
Education and experience
Passionate by art, she graduated in French literature, and spent years teaching. Meanwhile she never stopped drawing or painting, practising the pictorial arts in a self-taught way.
Moving to Barcelona, she had the opportunity to fully dedicate herself to her artistic passion and joined the drawing/painting programme at the Barcelona Academy of Art, where she graduated in 2020.
She now works in her own studio in Barcelona’s surroundings.
Residences
2023
2021-2022
Laterca, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain
NauArt, Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain
Exhibitions and events
2023
2022
2022
2021
2021
2021
2018
Tallers oberts LH, Laterca, L’hospitalet de LLobregat
En que ando, collective exhibition, NauArt galeria (Barcelona, Poblenou)
Nature, collective exhibition, Mrs Toolip Gallery (Barcelona)
Permanent exhibition of residents of NauArt (Barcelona, Poblenou)
Tallers oberts de Poblenou (Barcelona)
Colors de tardor, collective exhibition, NauArt galeria (Barcelona, Poblenou)
Misnoma, collective exhibition of the students of the Barcelona Academy of Arts (Barcelona)
Workshops
2020-2025
2022-2025
2023
2022
2021-2022
2019-2020
Plein air painting workshops (Spain, France, Scotland)
Adults and Teenagers courses and workshops (drawing and painting) at Kanteen Club (Barcelona, Spain)
Casal Arts Plastiques, Institut Français (Barcelona, Spain)
El bosque imaginario con tinta China (ink painting) with FLECHA in Las Arenas (Barcelona, Spain)
Life drawing workshops at NauArt (Barcelona, Spain))
Student-teacher (pencil life drawing) Barcelona Academy of Art (Barcelona, Spain)
“I took private lessons with Virginie during my final year of secondary school to prepare for art school entrance exams. Virginie taught me so much, both technically and creatively!”
— Lou Burtin, painter and sculptor“I was convinced that I couldn’t, and never would, draw anything acceptable. Taking lessons with Virginie showed me I was wrong. Her patience and teaching methods are supportive and tailored to each student, and one of the drawings I made during these lessons now hangs in my room.”
— Emma Sididris