Gregory Lomayesva

Gregory Lomayesva is an internationally recognized painter, sculptor and mixed-media artist who lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Drawing from a rich palette of personal experience that includes his Hopi and Hispanic heritage, a wry look at American popular culture, and a keenly evolving aesthetic sensibility that combines abstract imagery with razor-sharp observations, Lomayesva's work is at the cutting edge of American contemporary fine art.

A painter since his mid-teens, Lomayesva's road to artistry began when he combined his formidable woodworking skills with the classical imagery of his Hopi heritage into fusion artifacts that rapidly developed a strong collector base and wide acclaim. Beginning with the masks and dolls that are staples of his historical folk-craft tradition, Lomayesva quickly built a recognizable visual lexicon all his own that he was eventually able to bring to large-scale works of wood, bronze, and steel.

Expanding his output to include large-scale painting, Lomayesva began dipping into the contemporary zeitgeist of sampling and appropriation and took his audiences along on a journey to understand the totality of his influences, from Hopi imagery to popular culture icons to the works of the Renaissance Masters. Exploring the painting styles of the past, he began appropriating classical images from art history, scanning images from art books, then finding a section to explore further in his own work. Using an innovative photo-emulsion process, Lomayesva would capture the projection of the chosen image on canvass, thronic pop music on his label Drip Records, produced several short films, and recently "cloned" an out-of-production music vocal compression circuit board from the 1950s for his own use and for sale as a limited edition functional art piece to electronic music composers. With his developing skills in music, video, film, electronics, and other New Media, Lomayesva produced his first environment at Studio Site in December, and has more installation projects planned for the future.

Today, Lomayesva boasts a body of work that includes thousands of canvasses, woodcraft artifacts, and other ephemera, a collector-base that stretches from the US, Europe, and Asia, and representation in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Scottsdale, and Santa Fe. Within, you will find a chronological development of his work up to the present, with announcements of upcoming shows, projects, and conceptual works, as well as contact information for this talented and accessible artist.

"Hopiland is where my father's side of the family comes from ... and I begin most of my pieces with imagery from Hopiland—but I'm not a "Native American artist" per se—I'm an American artist with Hopi roots. Wherever I go, whatever I see, becomes the inspiration for new paintings and new motifs to use within my paintings. I can't imagine I'll ever run out of materials. In some ways, the use of a particular image in a composition—whether it's painted or silk-screened—is a visual representation of a different feeling I'm having. It's like emotional shorthand.

“I would like to thank my friends and patrons for the continued support in my evolution and consistently changing dilemma of being an artist ..." — Gregory Lomayesva

Collections and Shows

C. William Gilchrist Museum, Cumberland, MD

Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles, CA

Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC

Museum of Fine Arts 2000, Santa Fe, NM

Wheelwright Museum's Friends Gallery

STAP Project, Florence, Italy

Absolut, Nedra Matteucci's Fenn Galleries, Santa Fe, NM

Washington Arts Club, Washington DC

Gallery Piazza/Tony Abeyta, San Francisco, CA

Peyton Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Bryans Gallery, Taos, NM

Gallery 10, Scottsdale, AZ

Tony Abeyta Gallery, Taos, NM