Roseta Santiago started her career as an exhibit and graphic designer. In 1976, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she expanded her design business to include theme restaurant and nightclub design/build and marketing. She soon enjoyed a successful career that included travel throughout the U.S., Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico.
In 2000 she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she established a home and studio, and her lifetime dream to paint her vision in oils became a reality.
Mystery and light engulf the unique Western and Asian artifacts that are the subjects of her early body of work. She paints the beauty and integrity surrounding each of her subjects—usually objects that have been made by hand with primitive tools and resources—and is a master storyteller about the images she paints. Santiago is interested in the magic, intrinsic virtue, and makers of these objects. The subjects of these paintings are part of her ever-growing collection of eclectic artifacts, and her current body of work expresses feelings and stories about the people who made these objects.
Recognized and collected internationally, Santiago’s work may be found in the permanent collections of the Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, Georgia; the Museum of World Cultures, Genoa, Italy; the Nelson Museum of the West, Cheyenne, Wyoming; the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona; and in many private collections.
She has exhibited at the Autry Museum’s Masters of the American West; the Briscoe Museum’s Night of Artists; the Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale; the Desert Caballeros Western Museum’s Cowgirl Up! show; the Eiteljorg’s Quest for the West Art Show & Sale; the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Prix de West Invitational; and Settlers West’s American Miniatures show.
Santiago’s paintings have been featured on six magazine covers and on film sets. Periodicals her work has appeared in include Art of the West, Cowboys & Indians, the Santa Fean West, Southwest Art, and Western Art Collector West. She is a featured artist in the book Western Art of the Twenty-First Century: Native Americans by E. Ashley Rooney. Copies of her book Conversations in Paint Language: The Art of Roseta Santiago, though currently out of print, can still be obtained through Amazon.com. Visit her website at rosetasantiago.com.
Self-taught, Santiago lives and paints in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
