to get to know them and learn what makes
them tick.
“There’s a special relationship you create
with people,” she says. “It doesn’t always
happen that way—it’s the magic of them letting
you into their world. Otherwise, the painting
doesn’t happen.”
She adds, “The models I have are receptive
to [the narrative], but they are also already
the part.”
One example of this is Winter Moon, in
which the final outcome was inspired by model
Katrina Kavanaugh, with the narrative shifted
based on the way she interacted with the scene.
In the painting, Kavanaugh is wrapped in a red
cloak-like blanket in the dead of winter.
“She’s just kind of escaping, the way
she was in motion,” Santiago says. “I loved
photographing her and she just kept fixing
the blanket and I thought ‘This is really
fascinating.’”
Another model featured in several works in
Encantado—including Journey of the Heart,
Pieces of the Sky and Classic Beauty—is Ty
Harris, who Santiago says drives home the story
she is trying to tell with her paintings. That is,
the “need to tell people that I live in an abstract
and enchanted world.”
“All of the abstracts and artifacts come
alive in my head,” she adds. “I don’t just paint
the bowl because it looks good, I think about
what it means, what it has done and what it
has given to the family or medicine person it
belongs to. That’s kind of what enchantment is
to me—it’s not the literal, it’s not the linear, it’s
what’s between the lines.”http://www.westernartcollector.comFor a direct link to the
exhibiting gallery go toClockwise from
above:
Winter Moon,
oil on canvas,
30 x 24”
Woven in Time,
oil on canvas,
24 x 24”
Pieces of the
Sky, oil on
canvas, 54 x 48”