Spirits of a Spring Evening Drawing

Elena Blanco is a London-based artist working with watercolour and ink to make paintings and drawings. Her work is often illustrative and takes inspiration from literature, cinema and dreams. Working with watercolour and ink, she interacts with the unpredictability and fluidity of these media to conjure the illusion of light and space, creating dreamy, evocative scenery sometimes populated by silhouettes and intriguing designs that transport us to timeless landscapes reminiscent of voyage and unexplored territories ARTIST STATEMENT I’m fascinated by the fact that simple marks of ink and washes laid on a piece of paper can create such intriguing worlds. I like to think of my work as a poetic experience, both in the making and in the viewing. My paintings do not offer messages or answers. They are the pure experience of the joy and playfulness of art making. Art is a creative response to the creativity of the world. The artist's interaction with the world is indeed aesthetic, without functionality or judgment. It comes from a vision full of wonder and curiosity. It has no specific agenda. Like play, the work of art, both in the process of creation and in the process of contemplation, exercises a healing function bringing us closer to the pure state of being from which everything can emerge. My process is a journey that begins with certain purposes that often get lost along the way. One thing leads to another. The questions I ask in a piece remain relevant in the next although transformed. It is a process of becoming without conclusion. The accidental is part of the process from the beginning. Every contact has an impact on our minds and appears in one way or another in our work. New doors open all the time. Possibilities are never exhausted.