Blake Blanco (Seattle) was born in California in 1989, then grew up in Nashville, Tennessee.
Blake Blanco (Seattle) was born in California in 1989, then grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Blanco comes from diverse family and cultural backgrounds — he credits his grandfather of Guatemalan and Spanish descent for influencing his use of color, and for his fascination with surrealism. As a child he enjoyed drawing, but was never intent on becoming a visual artist until his early 20’s. In 2010 he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for three years. He aspired to become an actor, but felt disconnected and incomplete in LA. In 2013 he moved back to Nashville.
He was intrigued by the work of Salvador Dali and found that surrealism offered a portal for self-reflection and discovery. He became good at realistic and figurative painting but wasn’t fulfilled by these skills alone. Blanco’s artistic stretch into fantasy allowed for the complicated and intense self-realizations he was missing. These unfolded as artistic metaphors — mirrors of sorts — of his self-esteem, mental and physical health, our chaotic world, and most recently, the social impacts of COVID.
