Trip to Zocalo Gallery , Las Vegas New Mexico To Display “Retablos”

A while back I applied to show my work in the Zocalo Gallery in Las Vegas, NM.  They called me and wanted to see my “retablos” which are “icons” or paintings of saints.  My husband and I drove to Las Vegas on the appointed date, and in addition to showing my work, we had a wonderful trip.  I presented about half of my “retablos”, and explained to the gallery committee the history of this sacred art, and why I got interested  in painting them.  I explained that I loved the story of the people that painted them many years ago during the Spanish Colonial era New Mexico. As I read about them, I also read that the people that had come from Europe brought with them their memories of the older icons.  That was the origin of the colonial style of painting “retablos”.  I found in my  readings that they had been  painted in beeswax on wood in Europe during the early centuries of this type of artwork.  When the Spanish Colonials  in New Mexico started painting them,  they used natural pigments from plants and other natural substances, and their memories that they brought with them from Europe of the designs led them to paint in this manner.

A good part of the ancient “retablos” were destroyed in the 7th century to due a movement against having sacred icons.  In Spanish Colonial New Mexico, these “retablos” were very important to the new colonists who lived in small villages far from each other, and who sometimes  had to wait for months for a traveling priest to come and bless them.  They made rules that the “retablos” painted by local “santeros” could not be sold,  but they could gift them.  In later years, people from the East started coming to New Mexico, and started to buy them as they saw them as art pieces.

I like history, and I took an interest in the “retablos”, especially after reading of the connection to Europe, and the much earlier icons being painted with beeswax.  I found out that the one of oldest paintings of Christ is at St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in the Sinai peninsula which is painted on wood with beeswax.

I am proud to say that they accepted the “retablos”  into their gallery. (They can be seen in my website “Galeria De Suenos”)