Biography
[This is only a website template] Working primarily in watercolor, often layered with ink, gold leaf, and fragments of found paper — Rio creates works that exist somewhere between the observed and the imagined.
Raised in a family of immigrants, Rio grew up living between worlds — between languages, traditions, and a place you came from and a place you belong to. That experience of quiet displacement became the foundation of his visual language, and it lives in every painting he makes.
His practice is rooted in a deep respect for watercolor's unpredictability. Water moves. Pigment blooms. Edges soften in ways that cannot be fully controlled, only guided. For Rio, this is a philosophy as much as a technique — an acceptance that the best outcomes often arrive when you loosen your grip.
His work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally, and has been collected by private collectors in North America and Europe.
Artist Statement
I am drawn to the in-between. The moment before something is decided. The place where two things exist at once without canceling each other out.
Growing up the child of immigrants, I learned early that identity is not fixed, it shifts depending on where you stand, who you are with, what language is being spoken. My paintings live in that same fluid space. They are not about answers. They are about the texture of the question.
I work in watercolor because it cannot be forced. It asks you to stay present, to respond, to let go. That surrender is the practice. That is where the work begins.
C.V. / Resumé
location
Los Angeles, California
education
- 2008 MFA, Fine Arts, California Institute of the Arts
exhibitions
- 2024 Soft Country, Solo Exhibition
- 2021 Between Two Lights, Solo Exhibition
- 2020 Where We Came From, Solo Exhibition
- 2018 Carried Into The Dark, Solo Exhibition
- 2025 Keep on the Sunny Side, Group Exhibition
- 2024 Water and Memory, Group Exhibition
- 2023 Color and Diaspora, Group Exhibition
- 2019 Currents Of The Sky, Group Exhibition
- 2017 Emerging Voices, Group Exhibition
- 2014 Another Long Summer, Group Exhibition
- 2010 Talking to the Rain, Solo Exhibition
awards & residencies
- 2023 Artist Residency, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
- 2019 California Arts Council Fellowship
- 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
collections
- Private collections, United States and Europe
- Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California
- Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
press
- 2024 Artforum, Blake Rio: The Space Between
- 2022 Juxtapoz, Blake Rio on Water, Memory and Belonging
- 2020 The New York Times Style Magazine, Artists to Watch