With colors that swerve up, literally, from the canvas in thick swooshes and splatches of oil paints, Mateo Romero knows full well his paintings aren’t everyone’s cup of gallery cappucino. “I had a dealer in Arizona, and the person who worked in the gallery told me, ‘I think you’re wasting a lot of paint,'” Romero recalls with a slight laugh.
For the past six years, the Santa Fe, New Mexico, artist has been working in a unique method of portraying Southwestern landscapes and forms. His primary tools are oils, applied thickly on canvas with palette knives rather than brushes.
The results range from the sublime to what Romero calls the “wobbly,” where expressionist sensibilities dance around an otherwise serene scene, daring—if not taunting—viewers to find the kind of peace ordinarily found in Western landscapes.
Read the full article in the January/February 2023 issue.
Blue Lake
Acrylic
60″ by 90″
“This is an imagined landscape with Taos horsemen riding in the waters. Expressionist brushwork in a figure/ground format.”
Chimayo
Oil
24″ by 24″
“Expressionist impasto palette knife work with emphasis on vertical rock formations.”
