I paint animals and the ecosystems they share, the rainforest canopies, coastal shallows, and the suspended space between predator and prey. Working in oil through layered glazing and wet-into-wet passages, I build scenes that are representational at their foundation but heightened by saturated, luminous color and light inspired by stained glass and the way that the sun moves through leaves.
The work is built around coexistence: how vulnerability, care, predation, and interdependence all occur inside the same shared space, often within the same breath. Nothing in these paintings resolves outright, they hold a moment of steadiness inside uncertainty, asking how living beings continue to move through it while remaining present to one another.
I live and work in Danville, Kentucky, and my time in Costa Rica continues to shape how I see color, light, and the ecological relationships I paint. My current body of work extends this inquiry into rainforest ecosystems specifically.
Artist Bio
Isabelle Ballard is a Costa Rican-American oil painter based in Danville, Kentucky. Her work uses saturated color, animal imagery, and ecological relationships to examine coexistence, vulnerability, care, and predation.
Ballard earned a B.A. in Studio Art with a minor in Latin American Studies from Centre College in 2016. Her recent exhibitions include the solo exhibition Space Between Breaths at Levee Collective in Lexington, Kentucky, in 2026. She is currently developing a body of work centered on rainforest ecosystems.
Ballard has participated in the Loretto Artist Residency Program, a collaboration between the Sisters of Loretto and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and was selected for the COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence program at the Louisville Free Public Library. She is a two-time recipient of Kentucky Foundation for Women grants, including an Artist Enrichment Grant in 2019 and a Firestarter Grant in 2017. Her work is held in the Centre College Permanent Collection.
From 2020 to 2023, Ballard worked professionally as a tattoo artist in Nosara, Costa Rica, before returning her focus to oil painting.