Contemporary Cochiti Pueblo painter Mateo Romero is an internationally known artist. He is the recipient of a prestigious 2016 Native Arts and Cultures award as a National Painting Fellow. Mateo attended Dartmouth College and studied with acclaimed artists Ben Frank Moss and Varujan Boghosian.



Romero received an MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico. He is an award-winning artist who has exhibited internationally in Canada and the United States. He is a former Dubin Fellow in painting at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, NM. He paints in his studio in Santa Fe and lives in Pojoaque Pueblo with his wife, Melissa, and their children Erik, Povi, Rain and River.



“My paintings are based in abstract expressionist references. Bold colors slash across canvas, hot colors vibrates 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 companions along this urgent pathway of color and surface.” -Mateo Romero



As Native people we born into this world with an expectation that we will be participatory in life and contribute to society. What I have contributed most directly to life are my children and my art. Painting and drawing for me have always been urgent, compelling, and necessary. I make marks out of a need to communicate, to contextualize, to form meaning in the world around me. It is less of a choice and more of a manic drive deeply embedded in my psyche. Without these things, my life would be empty indeed.