ABOUT ELENA BLANCO
Elena Blanco is a UK-based artist working with watercolour and ink to create pieces inspired by literature, cinema, and dreams. Interacting with the unpredictable nature of these mediums, she creates dreamy, evocative scenes, manipulating light and space with a fluid touch.
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Her artistic process is characterised by receptivity and playfulness. The interaction between the freedom of the medium and Elena’s response to it shapes the outcome. The result is a collection of works where random washes and patterns organically transform into flowers, landscapes, and intriguing silhouettes.
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Elena's subjects emerge from chance encounters—stories, ideas, or the peculiarities of a chosen paper that affect ink and watercolour behaviour, leading to new paths for exploration. This spontaneous and adaptive approach infuses her art with a sense of discovery.
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In Elena Blanco's creations, a blank piece of paper becomes a space for the interplay of vision and chance. Stripped of pretence, her work reflects an awareness of art's enchanting quality, where dynamic washes and marks captivate as if illuminated by a magic lantern.
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ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m fascinated by how simple marks of ink on paper can create such fascinating worlds. I like to inhabit them as I work.
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I create images that evoke something but don't define it. I don’t want to solve their mystery but to delve into it.
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Like a child at play, in my practice I connect with the pure joy of the colours and shapes that emerge within the process and foster a sense of wonder, interest and possibility. Each drawing is for me a starting over from scratch. Nothing is taken for granted, everything must be rediscovered and learnt.
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The artistic medium [watercolour and ink] directs my work. I try to respond with openness and receptivity to the movement of pigment in water. In the dialogue between intention and accident, there are always moments of discovery.
I hope that the observer senses, when facing my drawings, the openness to possibility that was integral to my process. In this regard, coherence in style is not something I seek. However, I operate within series where a style naturally emerges from a specific theme, moment, or type of paper.
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I revisit my series over the years. The possibilities are never exhausted, new doors open to new paths of exploration, discovery and joy.
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