Bold colours cast upon darkened backgrounds make the flora and fauna of Fatima Ronquillo's paintings come to life. Existing somewhere between Rococo and Baroque, these extraordinary pieces feel right at home alongside Vermeer and Boucher. The spellbound expressions show figures devoted to the stories so carefully crafted for them. Themes of mythology and love dance between the pieces, holding the viewer just long enough to beckon at something greater, perhaps something inside ourselves. A blending of culture across borders, Fatima's oil paintings hold secrets that only a trained eye can unveil.
As a child, Fatima found the 1901 self-portrait from Picasso during his 'Blue" period in an art magazine. At around five-years-old, it was the Filipino artist's first glimpse into a wider world of ideas; a world she very much wanted to be a part of. She remembers feeling awestruck by the intensity of the blue field and Picasso's gaze. During her teens, she moved to Texas and was able to cross the border into Mexico and study mural traditions of Mexican painters like Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo. One of the pieces from her youth she's proud of was completed in high school. Through the sponsorship of the San Antonio Museum of Art, Fatima developed a few mural projects of her own. This was the first time she worked on a large and complex composition. Using various symbolic imagery and narrative, her paintings took several weeks to complete.
As a self-taught artist, this first big production taught Fatima a lot about the craft of image making and the important process of researching references. These skills, along with incorporating appropriate symbolism has been a mainstay in her art to this day. Though the early lessons she received were through the lens of this large-scale mural and its wider societal themes, she claims that her work has evolved into the small scale and Through Eyes Bound By Love intimate paintings she constructs now; something she likens to Frida Kahlo's own evolution.
