While strolling through a gallery, a painting catches your eye: an intricately portrayed primitive clay pot set against a stark black background. It’s a complicated design, dramatically displayed. You’re drawn to the simple artifact, looking deeper for meaning you can feel but can’t see.

That is exactly the effect Santa Fe, New Mexico, artist Roseta Santiago hopes to elicit. Painting these artifacts, she says, is like looking into the window of the ancient peoples’ souls and retelling their history. When she looks at a piece of pottery, Santiago doesn’t see just a geometric, complex design, although it’s clearly visible. What she does see is a clay pot, made by an ancient artisan, which speaks volumes about its creator.

Roseta Santiago

Gift of the Hopi Potter
Oil
12″x10″
“This ancient pot fascinated me. I am constantly reminded that these long-forgotten artisans had only the most primitive of tools to express these lovely works of art. In most cases, the pots were used in utilitarian ways, but were adorned with beautiful and/or sacred designs.”

Roseta Santiago

Into the Mystic
Oil
30″x40″
“If you have ever been ‘submerged’ in the brilliant yellow of the aspen leaves, and the sun has backlit the canopy of trees, it is a magical experience I could only describe as mystical. The wonders produced by nature and our experience and our questions is what this painting is about.”