Isabella Mellado

Painting and Drawing

A painting of several women in light blue dresses laying and seated in a shallow pool amidst a rocky background, as though they're in a cave. The figures are all depicted as being partially submerged, thereby distorting their image to almost surreal effect. Their faces are covered with flowers.
A young woman with dark, flowing hair, a fair complexion and wearing a black, sleeveless vest and suit, is seen standing with arms crossed looking directly at the viewer while in a darkened, red and black room with painted imagery of a fire and women dancing on wall behind her.

Isabella Mellado is a painter native to San Juan, Puerto Rico. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 and her Masters in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Mellado is best known for her magical realist paintings on latinidad, queer identity and tarot. Currently, she is completing a series of painted reinterpretations of the tarot about diaspora, community, feelings of estrangement and connection. Mellado works in a wide range of media including painting, photography, costume design, digital collage and sculpture.

Her work has been featured at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, IL; Walter Otero Contemporary Art in San Juan, PR; Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, FL; The Ponce Biennial in Ponce, PR and MECA Art Fair in San Juan, PR, among others. Mellado has also completed residency at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI, the Studios at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.

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Three women roughly in their twenties – with red hair and wearing a sheer red dress, another with dark blonde hair and a wearing tan, light fabric dress, and a third with dark hair and a flowing black dress – dance around a fire along the shore of an open sea. Each is holding a chalice as she dances