Artist Profile - Mercedes Elias
Biography
Mercedes was born in Barcelona and studied Spanish Litreature at the Barcelona University before studying as a Erasmus Student at Pisa University in Italy. She returned to study as a postgraduate at Barcelona before studying drawing and painting at Escola Lliure Del Mediterrani de Barcelona . Her study of art continued at the Academy of fine Arts of Manuel Sánchez Almendros, and on courses at Escola d’Arts i Oficis de la Diputació de Barcelona.
Artist Statement
I spent four years studying classical drawing and painting in Escola Lliure Del Mediterrani de Barcelona (directed by the painter J. Torrents Lladó). I have since trained under Manuel Sanchez Almendros and I form part of a studio cooperative in Barcelona, regularly participating in open studios.
My main influence is the “light” drawing inspiration from painters such as Velázquez, Vermeer and Sorolla. Light is my first technical objective. Light in painting is the time, the moment. The subjects of my work are women caught in time: it doesn’t matter what they’re doing or where they belong. All of them have in common their individual time, fixed in their own time. Anonymous women appear in my pictures centred in their own luminosity.
The target I follow now, as a painter, is to synthesize my feelings with the greatest simplicity.

