An architect’s precision with a painter’s heart.
Elena Berlo is a Romanian-born painter and illustrator who moves between New York and Bucharest, turning family heritage and personal stories into intricate botanical landscapes.
Constanța to Bucharest
Born in Constanța in 1979, Elena studied architecture and fine arts at the University of Bucharest. The discipline of the drafting table, with its attention to line, structure, proportion and light, became the foundation for everything she makes today.
Practice in New York City
Elena moved to New York and worked as an architect in well-established firms in the city. Years of designing in plan, section and detail shaped how she composes a canvas: nothing is accidental, and every element carries its weight. She deepened her artistic training at the Fashion Institute of Technology, studying color and fine art, which opened the door to a full-time life in painting.
Heritage, rendered in leaf and line
Today Elena paints full time, balancing studio life with family life. Her work revolves around the tree of life, lush botanical forms and the quiet geometry of mid-century modern design, often combined with the economy of Japanese sumi-e ink painting. Watercolor, hand calligraphy and gold leaf recur throughout her pieces.
Her trees have found a particular home in contemporary art, where they stand for the shelter and growth of a new household. Together with her husband and fellow artist Genu Berlo she runs the studio OnceUponaPaper, creating custom ketubahs for couples, cellebration prints and family trees for families around the world, guided by the belief that every love story deserves its own masterpiece.
Sharing the craft
Alongside her studio work, Elena teaches art in Bucharest, including to gifted and talented children. She brings the same two ideas into the classroom that guide her own work: look carefully, and build with intention. Her students learn drawing, color and composition as tools for telling their own stories.
Shown in Romania and beyond
Elena is part of the artistic collective that grew out of the artist laboratory in Nucșoara, Romania.
- The Garden of Ideas · group exhibition, Municipal Museum of Curtea de Argeș
- More Than Human · Towards an Ecology of Interdependence, collective exhibition
Let’s make something together
Commissions, original paintings, custom ketubahs, calligraphy and illustration projects, from New York and Bucharest, shipped almost everywhere.
get in touch