This Hispanic Heritage Month we’re featuring Kat Reeder, a Peruvian-American illustrator who joined Mendola Artists earlier this year. Kat specializes in posters, advertising, products, packaging, and lifestyle illustration. Born in Peru, raised in Miami, and now living in Hawaii, her blended cultural influences culminate in an art style that is uniquely hers. Read on to learn how Kat’s rich heritage lives in her art, in her own words below.
A Latin Heart, A Pacific Home
My art begins with a jolt of wonder. As a girl in Lima and later Miami, I spent hours cutting images from magazines, longing for Barbie dolls, day-dreaming about Latina movie stars, and obsessing over faces in vintage makeup ads. Those visual seeds of glamour still bloom in my work.
Being born in Peru gave me a palette of earth and fire and a love for the mythical and spiritual. There, celebration is a sacred ritual; a way of reaching for the divine through the arts.
Moving to Miami layered in Caribbean rhythm and U.S. pop spectacle. It gave me a love for bold expressiveness, cultural mixing, and the sensual confidence of women who own their presence.
Life in Hawaii deepened my appreciation for nature and for a life lived in kindness and love. Here I learned that love for the land, inner grace and female confidence are the spiritual tenets of the human experience.
Together, these experiences taught me to celebrate the mixing of cultures in ways that draw people toward beauty, connection and the ritual of creation.
Art Nouveau, Revisited
I call my style Tropical Nouveau: a lush fusion of 70s Latin pop, Art Nouveau, vintage calendar girls, and the bold colors of island life. Think Alphonse Mucha meeting a 1970s Miami record sleeve, all bathed in Pacific light. It’s a place in my heart where my Peruvian childhood still lives; where the influences of growing up surrounded by Caribbean, South American and island life still speak loudly.
I work with both traditional and digital tools, but every piece starts by hand. Pencil lines, painted textures, the slow build of color—these keep the human pulse inside a world flooded with AI images. The imperfections of the hand make the work feel alive, like music that can’t be looped exactly twice. This is also a quiet statement: handmade art still matters. It’s an antidote to disposable culture, a reminder that beauty worth keeping always carries a trace of the maker.
Women as Living Icons
In my family, the women owned the room. My mother and tías told stories with their fashion, their laughter, and the way they carried themselves. They were not passive muses. They were the artists of daily life. They could turn everyday moments into magic. That spirit lives in every face I draw.
When I look at a finished piece, I see the women who raised me, the music that moved me, and the landscapes that shaped me. I see Peru and Miami and Hawaii in dialogue. I see a visual language that began in old-world Europe and now dances in Latin colors. Most of all, I see a world that welcomes others to dream inside it.
