"Eva" Painting

Mara Blanco Baumann (Langenhagen, 1994)

I am a Spanish-German visual artist who is largely self-taught. My career has been shaped by constant practice, the study of life drawing and personal research into portraiture and the human figure. I also completed two years of professional painting studies at the University of Darmstadt (Germany).

Over the last few years, I have developed an extensive series of figurative portraits focusing on identity, vulnerability and emotional presence. My work has begun to be exhibited in Madrid, Berlin and Hanover, whilst I continue to develop my artistic practice and consolidate my pictorial language.

COLLECTION

What Remains

We live surrounded by images that we consume and forget with equal speed. Faces constantly appear on screens and disappear without leaving a trace. In contrast to this speed, What Remains proposes the opposite exercise: to slow down the gaze until the presence of the other becomes visible.

Each portrait in this series emerges from a real encounter. I invite people from my surroundings to share time with me, and I paint from life because I understand portraiture as an act of attention. Painting begins long before the first brushstroke: it starts in conversation, in shared silences, in patient observation, and in the trust that is built between the one who looks and the one who is being looked at.

Social, professional, and generational differences disappear. The space remains; those who inhabit it change. The series transforms this setting of presence, where each person leaves a distinct trace and reveals a unique way of existing.

I do not seek to faithfully reproduce appearance. Painting allows me to access what photography rarely reaches: the tension held in a pair of hands, the fragility that appears in a sustained gaze, the discomfort, serenity, or uncertainty that inhabit a motionless body. Color abandons its descriptive function to become an emotional language, capable of making visible what remains hidden beneath the surface.

Each portrait documents an unrepeatable moment. However, the series is not only about those who pose. It is about all of us. The emotions that pass through these faces—vulnerability, melancholy, hope, the desire to be seen—belong to a profoundly human experience. The intimate ceases to be private and becomes a place of shared recognition.

In this sense, What Remains is a reflection on memory and presence. What remains is not an exact gesture or a frozen expression.