About | artblondiau

About

Blondiau studied painting at the Art Academy of Braine-l’Alleud and at La Cambre in Brussels as a free student, alongside academic studies. His practice developed largely outside Belgium: after fifteen years in London, he has been based in the Netherlands since 2020.

Blondiau works on panels, at times in a vertical format that echoes the East Asian screen and scroll tradition—particularly the long-standing Chinese landscape tradition, in which space is conceived as something to be entered rather than viewed from a fixed point. This approach serves to open the pictorial field rather than contain it within a single frame. His practice often involves a subtractive process: beginning from a darkened surface, the image is gradually revealed through incision and abrasion. The method, however, is not limited to erasure. He also builds surfaces through successive layers of paint, working with subdued, muted colours in which differences of light and dark—rather than shifts in hue—determine the structure of the image

His work has been selected for the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, United Kingdom.

In 2025, Blondiau was accepted as a member of Pulchri Studio in The Hague, an artists’ association with a long tradition in maritime and landscape painting.

Art as a Form of Knowledge

My definition of art is simple: art is a form of knowledge. Not the kind produced through concepts, explanations, or theories, but a knowledge that arises through perception and experience. A work of art is successful when it alters the way we perceive—when it brings into view something that was already there but had remained unnoticed. In that shift, what changes is not only what we see, but the way we are present to it.

For this reason, I see art less as a means of representing the world than as a way of entering into relation with it. The knowledge it produces is not external or descriptive; it is immediate and lived. It does not stand apart from reality but takes place within it. At its best, art reduces the distance between observer and observed, allowing for a more direct form of contact.

This form of knowledge differs from scientific or technical knowledge, not in value but in nature. It does not aim to explain or to produce results, but to make experience more precise, more attentive. In a context saturated with images and information, where perception is often fragmented or superficial, art can re-establish a continuity with the world. It brings attention back to what is given: light, space, atmosphere, presence.

Simone Weil wrote about the human need for roots—enracinement. She described how modern life, shaped by abstraction and constant mediation, tends to separate us from direct contact with reality. I did not begin painting with this idea in mind, but encountering her writing later clarified something implicit in my work. The act of painting—scratching into wet pigment, building rhythms of marks, working through density and dispersion—is a way of grounding perception itself. Not in a fixed place, but in the experience of relation.

Against a world of images that pass continuously before us, I try to make paintings that do not simply appear, but that absorb. Not objects to be looked at from a distance, but spaces in which perception can settle and unfold.

2026 shows

Duna Atelier from 8 June to 28 June 226, Katwijk-aan-zee
Pulchri Studio : April 2026 Voorjaarssalon & Jacob Hartog Prijs 2026 The Hage, Netherlands
Klarelijn, Leiden, Netherlands
Montulet galerie, The Hage, Netherlands
Kuko Show, Katwijk, Netherlands

Past shows

Blondiau exhibited in galleries in London (Hicks Gallery, Cavaliero Finn Gallery, Gagliardy Gallery), Brussels (Arthus Gallery, Galerie Chapitre 12) and in Netherlands (Montulet Gallery, Mokum Gallery) and in several art fairs. In 2014 paintings of Blondiau were selected for an exhibition of the Dulwich Picture Gallery (London) and shortlisted for a prize. In 2018, the London County House commissioned two large paintings currently on permanent show. In 2023 and 2024 paintings of Blondiau were selected by the London Royal Academy of Arts for their Summer shows. Paintings of Blondiau are in several private collections.

Solo and group Exhibitions

2026:Naarden Art Fair (B. Claassen Fine Art)

2025: Naarden Art Fair(B. Claassen Fine Art); Katwijk Museum

2024: Royal Academy of Arts (London) Summer show; Mokum Gallery (Amsterdam) AAF; Naarden Art Fair (BCLaassen Fine Art) ; Alliance Francaise (The Haag)

2023: Gallery Zone, Leiden, The Netherlands. Royal Academy of Arts (London) 2023 summer show

2022 : Arthus Gallery- Brussels, Belgium

2022: Katwijk Museum, Netherlands

2018: London County Hall - London, United Kingdom

2014: Dulwich Picture Gallery - London, United Kingdom

2013: JP art Gallery , Batersea, United Kingdom

2012: Cavalierofinn Gallery / AAF - London, United Kingdom

2009: Gallery Bergamoff - Brussels, Belgium

2008: Hicks Gallery - Wimbledon, United Kingdom

2007: Gagliardi gallery - London, United Kingdom

2006: Quantum gallery - London AAF - london, United Kingdom

2005: Quantum gallery - London AAF - London, United Kingdom