Although Melissa Mailer-Yates intentionally avoided going to art school, she was met with success very early on in her artistic career. Among the honors Mailer-Yates earned were a commission from Her Majesty the Queen and several trips to Buckingham Palace. She has also painted portraits of princesses in the Saudi Arabian Royal Family and of Betsy Bloomingdale and the Los Angeles Consul-General, stateside. It’s natural that Mailer-Yates would be the one to depict these powerful women; the power and beauty of femininity is what inspires her art and is what she seeks to convey through her striking figural paintings.

Mailer-Yates has shown extensively throughout Britain as well as in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In addition to her work in portraiture, she has been widely recognized for her equestrian painting and has been made an associate member of the Society of Equestrian Artists. Mailer-Yates stretches her own canvas for painting and uses only 5 colors in her palette, not including black, treating the acrylic paint almost as oil paint, thinning it and blocking out tones that will be built upon in subsequent layers. The result is work that is sensual, beautiful, and as powerful as the subjects who sit for her.