Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Grandiose Characters Pose Before Enigmatic Sceneries in Fatima Ronquillo’s Beguiling Paintings

A portrait of a lavish woman among the flowers

“Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all” (2023) All images © Fatima Ronquillo, shared with permission

Shrouded with an air of mystery, Fatima Ronquillo’s enchanting oil paintings redefine the long-established style of Europe’s Old Masters. The subjects of her canvases are opulently-adorned, paired with a mélange of Catholic icons, flora, fauna, and magical realism that are bound together by motifs evocative of Colonial-era art. In her forthcoming solo show, Amore: An Ode to Love, Ronquillo accentuates a dream-like world where symbols of history, love, and longing come together.

Based in Santa Fe, the self-taught artist creates her paintings with a deep passion for art history, literature, and opera. Coupled with her lived experiences and the desire to depict worlds of the past, much of Ronquillo’s work seeks to reflect the timelessness of overarching dualities such as man and nature, the old and new, and masculinity and femininity. She tells Colossal:

We are all creatures of the sum of our experiences. I could not paint what I do without exploring the threads of my past and present. My childhood in the Philippines and immigrant experience in the U.S. has naturally given me a lens of seeing images and reading literature from the point of view of someone in between two worlds. Spanish Colonial Art imagery has been a connecting thread from the places I have lived in.

Amore: An Ode to Love opens this week at Dorothy Circus Gallery in Italy. For more updates and artwork, visit the artist’s Instagram and website.

 

A hand with a slithering snake, with white flowers

“My love is like to ice, and I to fire” (2023)

A portrait of a lavish child holding a pink flag

“Pink Flag” (2023)

A delicate hand holds a small painting of an eye with a pearl border

Two hands holding each other with butterflies resting upon them, in front of a water landscape.

A lavish child portrait.

A delicate hand wears a small painting of an eye with a pearl border. The hand rests on a book titled "Promises."

A lavish portrait of a man

“The Troubadour” (2023)

A marmoset sits on a relaxed hand with florals.

A gentle hand reaches for chrysanthemums

Two hands interlocked, holding a large red flower and a bird

“The Nightingale and the Rose” (2023)

 

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Grandiose Characters Pose Before Enigmatic Sceneries in Fatima Ronquillo’s Beguiling Paintings appeared first on Colossal.



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