Nastassia Melendez

My goal is to challenge the status quo by charging traditional imagery with the ethos of our time. Whether it's empowering women by juxtaposing them with established symbols of masculinity, or creating an inscrutable smoking dog which observes events unfolding with disaffected ambivalence, I want to use Pop Art as a vehicle to connect with the observer and test their point-of-view.

Taught to paint by her grandmother at age eight, art was a way of life for Nastassia Melendez early on, creativity offering a stable outlet in the face of the frequent moves of her military family. Exposed to films and magazines from the '50s and '60s by this same grandmother, Nastassia immediately connected with the Pop Art aesthetic found in those media, assimilating this style into her own. A sabbatical during college to focus on her art in Hawaii led Nastassia to a further expansion of themes: exotic animals and people from different cultures. Moving to Southern California during the height of the financial crisis, Nastassia painted as a form of catharsis, dealing with social issues such as poverty, drug use, violence, sexism, and social injustice by channeling those topics through a colorful palette of understated whimsicality.