“Sandias Retablo I, July 2026”

“Sandias Retablo I, July 2026”
Jake Trujillo
6.5” x 6.5” closed, 6.5” x 13” open
Oil on panel, handmade cabinet
$777


"The central thread through all of my creative work is wistfulness. Like the Tonalists and Romantics who inspired my early painting practice, my landscapes are about the emotional resonance of the natural world. My works seek to emphasize the heightened memory of experience: a blast of light at sunset, the moon’s sharp line almost audible. To me these experiences remain encounters with the sublime, and when I work with color dynamics or seek to blend abstraction and precision in the stretched representation of those memories, I feel myself grasping backwards at those thoughts and emotions, and that wistful feeling is both my vessel and destination. Working within the tradition of Southwest landscape oil painting to me has always felt like an interplay between archetype and evolution; to work within the tropes and ideas of The West while also attempting to bring a local and personal point of view to those well worn paths. I aim to create work which can feel both universal and intimate, bringing tones from the human interior to the vastness of natural space."

Jake Trujillo is a painter and musician based in his hometown of Santa Fe, NM. His primary medium is oil paint, and he is best known for his landscape paintings of the American Southwest which feature innovative and dynamic color and layout choices, blending traditional landscape oil painting approaches with modern design and psychedelia. Trujillo’s works are primarily hand-framed by the artist in a style which has evolved alongside the art and seeks to emphasize the intimacy of the physical object within a space or home.