Written by My book Spellbound is one of the selections for the 2019 Texas Book Festival, one of the largest and prestigious literary festivals in the country. Please join me at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center as I speak and converse about the book and my paintings on Saturday, October 26, from 12:00 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. followed by a book signing from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. I very much look forward to meeting you at the festival. If you are unable to attend the festival but wish to purchase a signed copy of Spellbound you may obtain a copy from the official festival bookseller, Bookpeople, or from the Meyer Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Spellbound is also available wherever books are sold.
The 24th annual Texas Book Festival will be held October 26-27, 2019. The Festival runs from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Sunday. The Texas Book Festival Weekend is free and open to the public and takes place in Austin, Texas, at the State Capitol and surrounding grounds. Please visit the festival website at texasbookfestival.org for more information on attending the festival, book sales and book signing, and event schedule. There are 300+ authors at the event including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, John Grisham, Alexander McCall-Smith, Malcolm Gladwell and Pulitzer finalist Susan Choi.
Spellbound has been a labor of love of nearly two years. It is a collection of nearly 200 of my most beloved paintings from 2008-2018 along with essays on recurring themes and inspirations and my journey as an artist. It is published by the Unicorn Publishing Group from the United Kingdom.
Spellbound is the first book-length retrospective of Fatima Ronquillo, a self-taught painter who was born in the Philippines, came of age in San Antonio, and resides in Santa Fe. The Spanish and American colonial histories of these three places—and the uneasy blend of cultures that resulted there—is a subtle presence in Ronquillo’s work, where Old World techniques rub elbows with tropes drawn from Latin American magical realism. The world of Spellbound is one that marries traditional portraiture with a subversive sense of drama and playfulness. Ronquillo’s stately subjects gaze out with a regal or military bearing while angels and animals flit mischievously around the margins. Dogs wear their master’s tearful eyeballs as collar jewelry, cherubic boys clutch writhing snakes in their fists, and nuns adorn their habits with ungainly floral towers and spritely jungle monkeys.
from Unicorn Publishing
Spellbound contains more than one hundred eighty color images of Ronquillo’s lush and deadpan oil paintings, the studies and sketches for several other works, and an introduction from noted arts writer John O’Hern.
I am so honored to be a part of the festival not only as an author but as a past official artist for the 20th Anniversary of the festival in 2015.
FATIMA RONQUILLO 
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