Die Trying

Blue Rain Gallery in the Railyard is sun-drenched and quiet. After a few introductions, artist Roseta Santiago shows off a picture of her latest model; a photograph of a young Indigenous girl flashes on the smartphone screen, a profile shot against a neutral background.

"This girl is beautiful, but I know in her lineage that there is pain there," Santiago says. "I look at how pain creates a person. It makes them who they are."

In her upcoming show, Santiago uses people to depict the memory and lifestyle of those "who were already here," in the old world.

"These are people I know," she says, gesturing towards a piece called "Dreamcatcher Journey" in which she has painted five people's different reactions to going through the dreamcatcher. The first figure, Gomeo, who appears in many of Santiago's paintings, is a Zuni silversmith. He stands at the front, leading the journey, eyes closed in concentration. Behind him, someone whose eyes are partially closed; and then, a nameless, more defiant figure. The fourth, looking out at us, questions the experience. The last is completely shrouded; someone who has rejected the whole thing, maybe closed off to the experience altogether. Santiago says she draws inspiration from everything, especially the people that show up in her everyday life.

A self-taught oil painter from Washington, DC, Santiago started out in graphic design that "looked like tagging," she says. In 1994, she was commissioned to paint life-size wildlife murals in nationwide Bass Pro Shops. In 2000, she moved to New Mexico.

Since then, Santiago has worked tirelessly to process both her painting subjects and the art business in Santa Fe, spending years teaching herself about marketing techniques.

"An art show is not just about sales," she says. "It's about telling people your bandwidth—talking about who you are today instead of who you were last year."

Now she signs her paintings with a simple "Santiago" so that she can be included in any kind of art show—not just opportunities designated "women-only," she says, because that feminism feels "regressive."

This year, "it's all about the easel," she explains, adding that she recently coordinated a move into a new studio space nextdoor to her old one. Now she can put painting first. Moving into this space is not the symbolic end of an era, but more of a refinement. "My goal is to wake up every day, make a cup of coffee and paint," Santiago says. "And I'll never not want that, I know that."

Another striking piece is "Santa Fe Sons," a 55-by-36-inch painting that features three native men wrapped up in woven blankets, standing in front of the old  Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway logo. They look like superheroes—but that pain is in there, too. The logo appears here in memory of Santiago's father, who traveled on the first Santa Fe Rail Crossing with Harry S Truman and eventually went on to become that president's personal chef.

Santiago's Filipino father endured a lot while he was growing up, particularly during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. "The horrors of that really change a person," Santiago tells SFR. "His way of getting things done has kind of filtered through to me; I will get things done if I die trying. 'Die trying' is my mantra." She motions to a silver medallion she wears with the words inscribed on it—a gift from her son.

Santiago attracts inspiration. The purple and orange exterior walls of her studio shoot up into a bright blue sky. Inside, her artifacts are carefully arranged throughout the space; her easel sits by the window. "It's the Porsche of all easels," she says, walking over to her latest piece, a 48-inch square with five roses positioned tightly at the bottom of the canvas in soft shades of light pink. The background is kind of a brownish black, and in small letters at the very top it reads "Hope."

"I was really trying to process my subject. Thinking about, 'Why are Native Americans angry? Why are flowers continually blooming and coming up from the seed and dying?'" she says. "[It was] the whole fleeting life thing, and 'hope' just kind of crept in."

The image of Santiago's new subject reappears, this time on a computer screen. She makes adjustments, refining the composition. "I can paint her in a loose style," she mentions. Using symbolism in her figurative work, Santiago is conveying more than what she sees in front of her. This work is what she thinks, has thought and will think; "At this stage, I don't know what my connections are, exactly. But this is my time. I want to be a painter."

Roseta Santiago: The New World: A Sense of Place and Dreams
5 pm Friday July 27. Through Aug. 11. Free.
Blue Rain Gallery,
544 S Guadalupe St.,
954-9902