Isabel Santos Illustrates Her Curiosities on Canvas

Before she helmed art galleries and sparked collaborations with creatives beyond fine art, Isabel Santos leaned toward pursuing her own creative career. Art, after all, has always been close to home. Her grandfather is the celebrated cartoonist and illustrator Mauro “Malang” Santos; she is also the daughter of visual artist and gallerist Soler Santos and painter Mona Santos. While she grew up with a natural affinity for the medium, Santos shares that she sometimes considered the idea of doing more than just creative work, an impulse that led her to earn a degree in European Studies at university.

However, it was after a post-graduation trip along the many museums and galleries across Europe that she found herself rekindling her passions for the arts, later inspiring her to further understand the craft by taking residencies in New York, Marnay-sur-Seine, and Berlin. With newfound knowledge and budding interests toward film, textiles, and ceramics, Santos would later culminate her experiences by practicing in their home studio, paving the way for her vivid yet stratified approach to storytelling.

Since then, Santos has gone on to join her first group exhibit in 2013, which later led to her first solo show in 2014, as well as a competition in 2020 that showcased her worldview through wearable pieces of art, among other milestones. Today, Santos continues to shape a visual style that layers her emotions and life experiences with nuances of 1940s pop culture and iconography, creating works that not only invite introspection but also a curiosity to question the familiar.