About the Artist
Melissa Casados is a Santa Fe, New Mexico based artist and abstract painter. Born and raised in Santa Fe the nation’s third largest art market she has always been drawn to making things, working intuitively with color, texture, and from an early age.
Her background spans a range of creative pursuits, but painting ultimately became the place where those instincts could come together. Working primarily in mixed-media and oil, Casados builds paintings through layers, marks, scraping, and revealing, allowing each work to develop through an intuitive process of discovery.
Influenced by the landscape, weathered surfaces, and enduring character of the Southwest, her work explores the space between chaos and order, vulnerability and strength, control and surrender.
Artist Statement
My work is an intuitive exploration of color, texture, and the passage of time. Inspired by the rustic New Mexico landscape, I draw from the weathered surfaces, Southwest colors, rust, patina, and layered history found in the places around me.
Working across mixed media, oil, wood, and canvas, I build and break down surfaces through a process of adding, removing, concealing, and revealing. Sgraffito and organic textures leave behind marks that become part of the story.
I am drawn to the space between old and new, past and present, and to the beauty found in what is imperfect, weathered, or transformed by time. Like scars on the surface of a life, these marks hold evidence of what has been endured, changed, and learned. For me, what time leaves behind is often where the deepest beauty and wisdom reside.
