Self-taught artist, Maria Isabel, was raised in New York City. Her special talent was noticed in her early childhood where she exhibited outstanding sensibility and imagination that reflected in her ink and pencil drawings, collages, and multiple art projects. She won the first prize in an Inter-Catholic School Competition; attesting that art was her destiny. Subsequently she majored in Architecture where she cultured Art History, Illustration, and Sculpture and studied two years of Fashion Design in the Artisanal School of Guayaquil.

In 1985, she co-founded and directed Art Gallery “Gala Centro de Arte” in Ecuador, South America. Gala showcased works of international eminent visual artist, fresh emerging talents as well as her own art during fifteen years before returning to the US due to a life-threating illness of her youngest child.  Currently she oversees the ArtsPark at Young Circle Gallery in Hollywood, Florida and manages to continue conceiving her passion of painting. Her art is hanged in private collections in New York, Florida - USA, Galapagos Island and Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Her paintings reveal the dazzling colors of nature’s wonders, the natural environment and the life of its creatures…… innocence, worriless, delightfulness. Her paintings portray the animal’s simple being and expose emotions felt by artist when admiring the greatness of their modest lives.

Her personal encounters with the underwater world fused with her unique artistic style sets free all sea life creatures in brilliant colors and with unbelievable imagination. She uses a variety of mediums and surfaces, canvas, wood, stone, paper, tile, aluminum, textile and giclée. With a constant spirit of discovering new effects she incorporates and blends organic elements to her work (sand, coffee, nuts). It’s all about combining interior impressions with earthy given elements.  Several of her paintings are framed with natural lobster trap wood brought from beautiful Key West, Florida.

Maria Isabel found in art not only the pathway to expose to the observer the intense and vibrant energy of parrots, cockatoo, birds, wild and sea life but these at the same time have been her therapist to assent the uncertain reality of her restrained personal world.