Isobelle Blair is an emerging oil painter, specialising in portraits and figures.

After becoming enamoured with art as a toddler, she engaged with oil painting as a teenager and sought private tuition and mentorship in portraiture by one of Australia’s most prestigious portrait painters. Currently practicing on Gadigal land, the Northern Beaches, she has most recently developed a body of work as a part of her residency at La Crème Creative Inc. At 22, she is a recipient of several prizes, including the Mosman Youth Art Prize, Northern Beaches Art Prize and Bluethumb Art Prize.

Isobelle’s current motivation in her artistic practice is exploring storytelling through the language of painting. She uses her art practice as an outlet for her thoughts, with many ideas coming to her as a spontaneous image in her mind’s eye before they are realised into a painting.

In her most recent body of work, you will see her exploration of surfaces and characters. Blair has had a great commitment to developing her technique to further her creative expression, strongly believing that technique and concept go hand-in-hand. Over the course of her residency, she has leaned into the idea that:

“it is not the difficulty of the work that the audience admires, it’s how useful the work is to them”.