Melvin Toledo Works

Melvin Toledo’s interest in art began as a teenager with drawings of characters from the popular Japanese manga series, Dragon Ball Z.  Encouraged by family members, he left his small hometown of Ciudad Antigua in northern Nicaragua to attend the School of Fine Arts in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. His goal was to learn how to create the still life paintings that his uncle’s home decorating company sold across the county. At the School of Fine Arts, he focused on graphite and pastel drawing. After a year of study, he left the school to take private classes from a still life painter and soon after he began to paint for his uncle using a mixture of oil paint and lithographic ink.

In 2007 he married Lauren, a Peace Corps Volunteer working in Ciudad Antigua and soon after moved to the United States where he began to paint exclusively in oils.

“Once I arrived in the States, I continued to paint still life.  I took some classes and attended workshops that helped improved the quality of my work. In 2011 after moving to Atlanta, GA, I started to sell my work through galleries in the south. Lately, I have shifted my attention to portrait painting, a subject that I have always found very fascinating. I am currently working on a new series of work about immigration in the United States.”