Don Martinez
Miguel Pino
Created : 1988
Donated : 1994
Medium : Drawing/pencil
Dimensions: 14 inx11 in
Located: 3rd Floor,South Main Hallway
These three character studies by Miguel Pino are indicative of his preoccupation with faces, particularly those of the long-time Hispanic and Native American inhabitants of northern New Mexico villages. According to Pino, faces are the key or the map to a person’s true character. The face tells a history of the person and her/his life experience. When Pino begins a character study (he usually works from a photograph), he starts with the eyes, using them as a focal point. He then works out from the eyes, pulling lines out and around to create the wrinkles and the contour of the face. These lines are “like a map to follow,” and drawing them out is more about engraving on paper, the history of a life and preserving it. Pino’s portraits of viejitos from northern New Mexico are his attempts to capture and preserve a vanishing lifestyle and culture.
Pino is a native New Mexican. He is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the village of Pojoaque, 25 miles outside of Santa Fe. Through his drawings, he continues to explore the lives and histories of grandmothers, grandfathers, Native American figures, and those older and wiser individuals of New Mexico who in many ways are the embodiment of past cultural and historical traditions.
