Artist Profile: Isaac Pelayo is Not His Dad

by Abel M. Salas It is not unbelievable or surprising that Isaac Pelayo, still in his early 20s, is opening his first solo exhibition as a fine artist this week at Paul Stewart’s Over the Edge art gallery in South Central LA. He has been drawing since he was in diapers. His father, an event producer, a curator, a self-taught illustrator and an accomplished, internationally recognized graphite artist with a day job at Disney, keeps the earliest evidence of his son’s artistic promise in his collection. The drawing, says the University of Nevada-Las Vegas art student, is proof enough that he came to art on his own. As toddler, Pelayo observes in retrospect, he couldn't know his father was pursuing a career as an artist. The impulse to create, he honestly believes, came from within. As a result, he does not count the biological father he saw only when occasion allowed during his childhood, as a primary influence. “My dad (artist Antonio Pelayo) has a drawing of a big smiley f...