WIAP 2025 | Bianca Raffaella
Bianca Raffaella - Women In Art Prize for Printmaking Winner 2025
Printed Editions was delighted to be the sponsor of Women In Art Prize for Printmaking 2025.
About Bianca’s winning artwork Just out of reach – close ; closer ; closest in her own words …
Just out of reach − close
Just out of reach − closer
Just out of reach − closest
A triptych of three monoprints. Float mounted and framed with white slip. Monoprints; Acrylic on Somerset 300gsm, May 2025.
“This evocative triptych, “Just out of reach – close; closer; closest,” features three monoprints that explore the nuanced relationship between perception and distance through the lens of a visually impaired artist. Each piece presents a face at varying proximities, inviting viewers to contemplate the emotional and sensory experiences associated with sight loss and connection.
To create these dynamic monoprints, the artist worked quickly on a plate, applying acrylic paint with urgency to capture the essence of each face before the medium dried. This spontaneous approach not only reflects the fleeting nature of perception but also mirrors the artist’s own experience of grasping at moments of clarity amidst the constant motion of her sight. Together, these monoprints create a powerful dialogue about the nature of closeness and the ways in which we perceive one another, emphasizing the beauty found in both clarity and obscurity. The triptych serves as a poignant reminder of the complexities of human connection, inviting viewers to engage with the artwork on both an emotional and sensory level.”
Working from memory and sensory cues rather than direct observation, Bianca Raffaella is a British artist and activist working between London and Margate. As a partially sighted artist, her ephemeral floral and figurative paintings draw viewers into her world by capturing fleeting moments suspended in “persistent vision,” where her sight is in constant motion, and images appear only briefly as faint shadows or flickers of light. Raffaella’s ongoing series of textural flower paintings evoke the artist’s experience of beauty in braille, which was how she first learned to read and write.
Raffaella relies on touch in her painting process. Never losing contact with the canvas, she blends delicate hues of blue, beige, and dusty pink until they become an ethereal impression, cloudy details made with fingertips, brushstrokes or scrapes of a palette knife.
Michael Lieberman from Printed Editions awarding Bianca with the Women In Art Prize for Printmaking
Bianca winning both the printmaking prize and the overall Women In Art Prize
Women In Art Prize overall winner
About Bianca …
Graduating with a First-Class Honours degree in 2016, Bianca Raffaella was the first registered blind student to graduate from Kingston University with a degree in the Visual Arts. Since completing her 2023/4 residency at the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (TEAR), Raffaella now works in Margate, where she uses gestural fragments and impasto techniques to capture motion and visual shifts on the canvas. In 2021, Raffaella’s work was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition, coordinated by Yinka Shonibare, followed by her solo exhibition, Hushed Impressions, at Orleans House Gallery in 2023. She was also awarded the NatWest Entrepreneurship Funding Prize in 2019 for her bespoke sensory fashion label.
An advocate for accessibility in the arts, Raffaella has shared her insights as a speaker at the Goethe Institut’s Beyond Seeing project and as a panellist at Tate Modern’s Please Touch the Art talk. More recently, she was selected by Dame Tracey Emin for Flowers Gallery’s 2024 Artist of the Day series, presenting a one day solo exhibition as part of the programme’s 25th edition.