It is impossible to view Isabel Pardo’s work without becoming intrigued by its imagery.
Working primarily with gouache on paper, Pardo’s work overwhelmingly references mythology, history, and religious iconography. With fluid lines and clear colors, Pardo paintings include images of coiled snakes, overflowing fruit bowls, vines with thorns, hands gesturing, and, in an homage to St. Lucy, eyes on a plate. Painted with graceful, fluid lines, her images reference religious symbols as well as those that reference universal archetypes, and her body of work echoes creative movements such as magic realism and surrealism.
For examples of Pardo’s work, go to BHCA’s Instagram page.
Pardo embraces this style of powerful images rendered with both precision and a light touch. She is influenced by surrealists who have worked with tarot, such as Salvador Dali and Leonora Carrington (yes, look Carrington up!). She also is influenced by her upbringing, in the Catholic Church with family roots from Costa Rica and Italy. Her paper canvases vary in shape and size and often come together, arranged installation-style, to cover a wall, or a room. In this way, the images talk to each other, within each canvas and across canvases.
A New Jersey native, Pardo came to Baltimore for a program at MICA in which she was able to focus both on painting and curatorial studies. Being in the class of 2021, both her senior year and her study abroad programs were interrupted by the COVID pandemic. She spent a year making art in the basement of her family home, before returning to Baltimore and settling back in Bolton Hill. She lives on Lanvale Street and her studio is in the CopyCat Building.
Now she splits her time between her work at the Baltimore Museum of Art, as the administrative assistant in the director’s office, and her studio in a former warehouse space in the Station North Arts District. She speaks highly of working at the BMA, which she says offers her the opportunity to be a part of a rich Baltimore community of creative people and observe the curatorial process. Pardo loves Bolton Hill. She had no doubt that this was the place for her to live after college. She describes it as “a great neighborhood. I love sitting on the stoop. It reminds me of my grandmother’s house in Queens.”
At 26, Pardo is early in her career and she is steadily making and showing new work. Her most recent solo shows include exhibitions at John Fonda Gallery, The Alchemy of Art, and the Night Owl Gallery. Photos from these shows can be found online on her website at https://isabelpardoart.com/work and on BHCA’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
– Francine Marchese
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