Online Feature

Mateo Romero: SWAIA Indian Market poster artist for 2008

by Lisa Abeyta

Talk to Mateo Romero and you’ll be just as likely to hear him describe his favorite comic book characters as you will to hear him compare the great European painters of the Impressionist era with the contemporary American Indian artists of the 1960s. A unique blend of urban and native, contemporary and traditional, Romero’s art depicts many of the contradictions of his own life.

Raised in Berkeley, Calif., Romero studied at Dartmouth College with such artists as Ben Frank Moss and Varujan Boghasian before earning his MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico. Currently a Dubin Fellow in painting at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, Romero’s art wins awards and is displayed internationally. His younger years of urban higher education have created a depth and breadth of knowledge which Romero draws from with ease as he talks about any subject.

But within this very urban setting, Romero said he experienced within his own family was a micro-level of the rich texture of art which runs through an American Indian village.

“My brother and I, we were into collecting comic books, and then we were surrounded by all this rich visual art. My father was a painter, a Dorothy Dunn School painter at the Indian School in Santa Fe,” says Romero. “My father was actually of a time and generation of artists before I was even born; he was certainly a role model of mine.” Romero, the father of five children ages one to 17, now lives in Pojoaque, where he paints in his private studio.

“I had a hard time learning to read,” he says. “My brother did, too. And when I started to put it all together, comic books were what I wanted to read.”

Romero says the contemporary style of comic book drawings are still something he draws from in his own art.

–Lisa Abeyta is a freelance writer.