Peyton Wright Gallery is pleased to present a number of works by modern New Mexican artists working within the state’s historic artistic legacies, currently featured in the gallery this month during Spanish Market.

The collection includes works by Marie Romero Cash, Irene Martinez-Yates, Christine Montaño Carey, Verne Lucero and others.

These artists exemplify a modern inspiration of traditional craftsmanship from over the past 200 years in a wide array of techniques and genres.

The santero (or “saint-maker”) tradition in New Mexico dates back to the mid 1700s, when Spanish missionaries (usually Franciscan priests or friars) worked with local artisans to create religious imagery for worship, religious education, and church decoration.

  The santeros made retablos (painted images on hand-adzed pine panels) and bultos (carved three-dimensional  figures), both of which were then gessoed and painted with native pigments. They also created altar screens for churches. 

The art continues into the present day, evolving to incorporate other techniques and materials such as tinwork, clay, and paint on glass.

The tradition has also reached a greater gender parity among its creators than in the past.

As renowned santera Marie Romero Cash writes:

Although researchers have no evidence that women participated in the creation of this art during the colonial period, it certainly became a reality in the 1970s in Santa Fe. During that decade, several women became santeras, including my late sister Anita Romero Jones, Monica Halford, and Gloria Lopez Cordova….Today there is an impressive number of female artists who are honored to carry that title.