Elena Sandovici at a glance:
Artist specializing in watercolor on paper or acrylic on gold background. Elena paints mostly figurative art depicting animals, birds, buildings, and seascapes. She welcomes pet portrait commissions as well as renderings of beloved homes. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is part of the permanent collection of the Tremont House Hotel in Galveston. Elena is one of the artists selected for the 50 Artists Houston 2025 book by Taft and Dana McWhorter. Elena is a 2018 graduate of John Ross Palmer’s Escapist Mentorship Program and a 2020 recipient of the Escapist Alumni Award.
Fiction Writer, author of several novels including the best-selling Storms of Malhado, a historical novel set in Galveston, featuring three major hurricanes that devastated the Island. Elena’s books are available through beloved local retailers such as the Then & Now Bookshop, Hendley Market, and Gaido’s in Galveston, as well as on Amazon in various formats, including audio.
Galveston Expert & Walking Tour Guide Elena loves nothing better than to show visitors the hidden side of Galveston Island! There’s so much more to this mystical place than meets the eye!
Owner of Blackbird Cottage – gallery space, artist residency, place of magic. Blackbird Cottage was built in 1893, survived the Storm of 1900, and has a prime location in Galveston’s historic East End, walking distance to both the Gulf and downtown.
Follow the journey and learn more at HaveWatercolorsWillTravel.com a blog that has been updated daily since 2013
Contact Elena:
@sandovici_art
@blackbirdgalveston
Elena has studios in both Houston and Galveston and will gladly show you her work by appointment.
The longer story:
Maria Elena Sandovici is a full-time artist, writer, and gallery owner who divides her time between her home studio in Houston and her artist cottage on Galveston Island. She works primarily in watercolor on paper and acrylic on wood with occasional luscious incursions into oil painting. Balancing figurative and abstract, her works explore her daily experiences and emotions, which she has been blogging about at HaveWatercolorsWillTravel.com since 2013. The discipline of making and sharing something every day creates a sense of well-being in her life, no matter the circumstances. Making art has always been her favorite escape. So has writing. Sandovici is the author of several novels, including Storms of Malhado, The Glory Days of Aimée Bonnard, Lola Is Never Drinking Again, all set in Galveston, beloved by locals and tourists alike, as well as the Miss Vulpe trilogy.
Sandovici was born in Bucharest, Romania and had a non-traditional upbringing traveling from her parents’ cosmopolitan life as urban intellectuals to the mellow Southern European town where her grandparents made a fortune selling fur coats, to New York City, a place that as a child struck her as not much fun at all. She graduated from the German High School Bucharest in 1997 with an International Baccalaureate and still maintains that German is a lovely language, especially when spoken with a Viennese accent. She speaks six other languages, and loves Spanish best. She wishes her Catalan were better. She went to college in Philadelphia, and fell in love with Barcelona during a semester abroad. Sandovici went on to earn a Ph.D. in Political Science from SUNY Binghamton in 2005. She finds that a Ph.D. is wonderful training for being a full time artist and writer, as it teaches one first and foremost not to give up.
Before quitting her tenured job to open her own gallery in Houston in December 2018, Sandovici was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Lamar University, in Beaumont, TX. Her research centered around political participation, leadership, social movements, and the difficulty of human cooperation. Her scholarly career led her to extended research stays at prestigious universities, such as the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Juan March institute in Madrid, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. These stays resulted in an impressive list of academic publications nobody reads except for other academics. They also underscored more and more her desire to experience the world not as a social scientist but as an artist and writer.
Making art a priority, Sandovici moved to Houston in the Fall of 2015, and rented studio space first at Hardy and Nance Studios, then at Sawyer Yards. In 2017, she met internationally acclaimed artist John Ross Palmer and applied to his Escapist Mentorship Program, from which she graduated in 2018. While in the program, she learned important business skills, though her main focus was befriending Palmer and his dogs and spending time painting in the famous artist’s studio (with the dogs on top of her). They are still friends to this day and still paint together.
Sandovici received the Escapist Alumni Award in 2020 for her tireless efforts to keep her collectors entertained during the pandemic. Her live painting sessions during lockdown have been featured in the Houston Chronicle.
Besides Houston, Sandovici has had solo shows in Barcelona, Binghamton, Galveston, and Beaumont, and her work is on permanent display at the Tremont House Hotel in Galveston. In 2020 she was honored to be featured on the Meet Houston’s Artists docuseries which led to her participation in the Meet Houston’s Artists show at Sawyer Yards in February 2021. In 2025, Sandovici is featured in the 2025 edition of 50 Artists Houston.
Combining her love of art, her love for the Island, and her love of hospitality, Sandovici recently acquired a 1989 home in Galveston, which she named Blackbird Cottage and uses as her own creative retreat, gallery space, and where she hosts a resident artist twice a year.
Stay tuned to see what’s next!
For appointments or other inquiries please email Elena Sandovici at elenasandovici@gmail.com or fill out this contact form.
Sandovici Art LLC has been operating in Houston since January 2019.
