Mateo Romero - Towa Land

Towa Land mate o romero

Native people are born into this world with an expectation that they will be participatory in life and contribute to society. What Mateo Romero has contributed most directly to life are his children and his art. Painting and drawing have always been urgent, compelling, and necessary. He makes marks out of a need to communicate, to contextualize, to form meaning in the world around him. For him it is less a choice and more of a manic drive deeply embedded in his psyche. Without these things, his life would be empty indeed. Romero’s paintings are based on abstract expressionist references. Bold colors slash across canvas, hot colors vibrate next to cold, drips and smears hover over the surface. Action-painting references abound in stabbing, gestural marks. Artists like Franz Kline, William De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell are his companions along this urgent pathway of color and surface.