FATIMA RONQUILLO
Together Solo Exhibition
Fatima Ronquillo
Together Solo Exhibition December 4 - 10, 2020
on the cover: Together (detail) oil 9x12 inside cover: The First Jasmines (detail) lithograph 22x19
225 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM 87501 www.meyergalleries.com 505.983.1434
Fatima Ronquillo is a self-taught painter whose classically inspired imagery evokes a world of serenity and charm. Her paintings of mysterious personages, often set against pastoral and idyllic landscapes, are accented with an underlying sense of drama and playfulness. These small intimate works invite a respite from the frenetic pace of modern life. Fatima is an intuitive painter who works from a deeply personal visual language and imagination. Each painting is an unfolding story of layered meanings brought to life through multiple layers of paint. Her painted surfaces sparkle with thin delicate glazes over thick impastos and scattered scumbles of semi transparent colors. She paints in the style of the European classical traditions coupled with a magical realism rooted in folk and colonial imagery. Hers is an authentic voice echoing from an inner world where art history meets with nostalgia and imagined characters from literature, theatre and opera. Born in San Fernando, Philippines in 1976, Fatima Ronquillo emigrated as a child to the United States in 1987 where her family settled in San Antonio, Texas. She currently resides and maintains a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband and west highland terrier. Her work is included in private collections throughout North America and Europe.
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Fatima Ronquillo’s new series of o Together, contemplate warring fe hope. The Santa Fe artist, struggled year in the midst of a global pan sentiment is symbolized in the w
oil paintings for her solo exhibition, eelings of love and grief, loss and d to find solace in her subjects this ndemic and societal unrest. This works created for this exhibition.
Refusal: Hand with Maya Angelou oil 7x5
The Watchers oil 20x16
“The realities of the coronavirus pandemic hit home in March just as I was beginning a new body of work.” “Suddenly the paintings that had been germinating in my mind were arrested in thought, evolving as rapidly as the collective emotions all around me. Shall I continue to paint love and joy when there is so much sorrow and panic? I found myself unable to grasp at one coherent voice from the disparate images rising into my heart and mind.” -Fatima Ronquillo
Hand with Tulip and Lover’s Eye oil 12x6
Stillness Speaks oil 12x9
Clasped Hands with Hummingbirds oil 12x12
From the internal struggle of what to portray in her exhibition paintings, Ronquillo’s first painting for the exhibition emerged, inspiring the show’s title and overall theme. “Together” is an image of two clasped hands before a landscape, fingers entwined as green vines with fresh purple blooms circle around. Two birds are perched on top, which brought the words of Emily Dickinson to the artist’s mind: “Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops - at all…
Together oil 9x12
Charity with Family of Lemurs oil 32x30
Hand with William Shakespear’s Sonnet 87 oil 5x7
Flora in Armour oil 24x20
Hand with Squirrel Monkey and Lover’s Eye oil 12x12
The First Jasmines 5-color lithograph on aluminum substrate. Paper size 22x19 inches, image size 16x13 inches. On Somerset Grey paper. Edition of 30. Produced in collaboration with Landfall Press 2020.
“The First Jasmines was inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s poem of the same title. I have always been fascinated by traditional printmaking process after being introduced to etching over 25 years ago. Other than the odd workshop I had not had the chance to explore the medium. Imagine my delight when Jack Lemon, master printmaker and founder of Landfall Press, invited me to create a print with them. It is my first editioned print and Jack’s final official print before his retirement. The First Jasmines print was run on an antique press from the 1860s, the Marinoni Voirin. It is an impressive piece of machinery that was converted to electrical power from steam power having made its way from Paris to Santa Fe. My work has always referenced the art of the past and I find it romantic and fitting that this print was made on the Voirin.” - Fatima Ronquillo
Contact a Meyer Gallery representative to inquire about pricing & availability
It is such an honor to have been given the chance to collaborate with this legendary print shop. Landfall Press has just celebrated 50 years of printmaking publishing prints by so many artists whom I admire such as Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, David Ligare, Kara Walker, Leslie Dill and Judy Chicago to name but a few. I am so honored to be a part of it.
Spellbound
200 pages 180 color plates 8 3/4” x 10 1/2” 2019 $35 + shipping
Spellbound is the first book-length retrospective of Fatima Ronquillo, a selftaught painter who was born in the Philippines, came of age in San Antonio, and resides in Santa Fe. The Spanish and American colonial histories of these three places—and the uneasy blend of cultures that resulted there—is a subtle presence in Ronquillo’s work, where Old World techniques rub elbows with tropes drawn from Latin American magical realism. The world of Spellbound is one that marries traditional portraiture with a subversive sense of drama and playfulness. Ronquillo’s stately subjects gaze out with a regal or military bearing while angels and animals flit mischievously around the margins. Dogs wear their master’s tearful eyeballs as collar jewelry, cherubic boys clutch writhing snakes in their fists, and nuns adorn their habits with ungainly floral towers and spritely jungle monkeys. The book contains more than one hundred eighty color images of Ronquillo’s lush and deadpan oil paintings, the studies and sketches for several other works, and an introduction from noted arts writer John O’Hern.
Fatima Ronquillo
Together
Solo Exhibition
Clasped Hands with Hummingbirds
12x12 SOLD
Charity with Family of Lemurs 32x30 SOLD Flora in Armor 24x20 SOLD Hand with Squirrel Monkey and Lover’s Eye
12x12 SOLD
Hand with Tulip and Lover’s Eye 12x6 SOLD Hand With William Shakespear’s Sonnet 87
5x7 SOLD
Refusal: Hand with Maya Angelou 7x5 SOLD The Watchers 20x16 SOLD Together 9x12 SOLD
Fatima Ronquillo Selected honors & Publications • •
PUBLICATIONS / COLLABORATIONS 2015 Official Poster Artist, 20th Annual Texas Book Festival 2002 Artist Fellowship Grant, City of Ventura Cultural Arts Grants Program, Ventu ra, California
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PUBLICATIONS / COLLABORATIONS Ronquillo, Fatima, Spellbound, Unicorn Publishing, 2019 Out of the Box: Artist Edition, The Cut (New York Magazine Special Issue), August 20 – September 2, 2018, pp.78-79 “Devotion”, A Magazine Curated by Alessandro Michele #16 Editions Barbe à Pop, Sébastian Escande, Grand Salon de la Micro-Edition #4, Lyon, France, April 2013
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ARTICLES / REVIEWS Parazzoli, Grace, “Mythological Portraits: Painter Fatima Ronquillo”, Pasatiempo, The New Mexican, cover and pp. 32-34 Bennett, Megan, “Unspoiled Wilderness”, Albuquerque Journal North, f September 14-20, 2018, pp. 9, 11 RedMilk Meets Fatima Ronquillo, RedMilk Magazine, February 1, 2018 Hey! Modern Art and Pop Culture, Issue No. 28, pp. 70-75 “First: What Nina Loves”, Marie Claire, December 2016, p. 62 Exhibition Preview: “Fatima Ronquillo: Possession,” American Art Collector, Issue 113, March 2015, pp. 100-101 Tolpa, Eve, “The Art Issue,” Santa Fean, June/July 2014, p. 44 Image feature, Vogue Gioiello, March 2014, p. 128 Press, Marina, “Q & A Interview,” Poets and Artists Magazine, Issue # 53 “Love,” March 2014 Fatima Ronquillo, Artistic Moods, June 9, 2013 Exhibition Preview, American Art Collector, Issue 90, April 2013, pp.122-123
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Mintz, Diandra, “Fatima Ronquillo’s Contemporary Portraits Evoke Old World Charm,” Beautiful Decay, April 10, 2013 McGraw, Kate, “Respite from Modern Life,” Albuquerque Journal / Santa Fe, Septemer 21, 2012, pp. S6, S4 Decor-Art Blog, “Falling in Love with an Image: An Interview with Fatima Ronquillo,” A Muse for Life, Spring 2013, pp. 27-33 Wichert, Geoff, “Making Up Stories,” 15 Bytes, March 29, 2012 Poets Artists Magazine, Issue # 30, pp. 18-21 Haggerty, Rachel, “Fatima Ronquillo: Devotion,” Aether Magazine, Fall/Winter 2011, pp. 16-19 Exhibition Review, American Arts Quarterly, Spring 2011, pp. 52-55 Abatemarco, Michael, “The Eyes Have It: Fatima Ronquillo’s Windows to the Soul,” Santa Fe New Mexican, Pasatiempo, October 22-28, 2010, pp. 30-31 Jackson, Devon, “Art Preview,” Santa Fean, October/November 2010, p.52 Wichert, Geoff, “Mirror Mirror: Artists Reflect on Today’s Figure,” 15 Bytes, Septem ber 10, 2010 Ainslie, Roberto Carlos, review, Tokyo Blues, May 16, 2010 feature in Artist Watch, Escape into Life, December 30, 2009 “Exhibitionism,” Pasatiempo, October 16-22, 2009, p. 58 Full page magazine feature, The Oxford American, “The Southern Lit Issue 2009,” No. 66, p. 25 “Classically Inspired,” Best of the West, Southwest Art, April 2009 Koper, Rachel, “A Grand Affair,” Arts Review, The Austin Chronicle, January 16, 2009 Khanna, Nandita, “Quick Trips: ‘The Culture Fix’, Austin, Texas,” Condé Nast Traveler, May 2008, p.130 Fauntleroy, Gussie, “21 Under 31” Annual Emerging Artists Issue, Southwest Art, September 2007 “The List,” Ventana Monthly, August, 2006, pp. 40-41 Woodard, Josef, “Color and Bounty,” Calendar Weekend, Ventura County Edition, Los AngelesTimes, February 14, 2002. p. 51 Woodard, Josef, “Grouping Art,” Calendar Weekend, Ventura County Edition, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2001, p. 6 Woodard, Josef, “Spirit of Spring,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2001
225 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM www.meyergalleries.com