The Garden of Love

Three new paintings are now available at the Meyer Gallery in Santa Fe. These new works have been inspired by gardens, Tudor and Elizabethan embroidery, and the poetry of William Blake. It is a fragile idea, that of Paradise, the idyll of childhood. We leave this garden of love and grow into the constraints of adulthood and leave our innocence and joys behind. The poem contrasts nature and humans, love and religion, good and evil. It inspired me to create a painting where a garden of love is replicated in the embroidery which feature a wounded heart and weeping eye amongst a profusion of flora, insects and birds. The enclosing thorny briars and a paradise tree snake provide the imagery of being bound and held.

“The Garden of Love” 16×12 inches, oil on aluminum panel. Copyright 2025 Fatima Ronquillo
For inquiries please contact Meyer Gallery Santa Fe

THE GARDEN OF LOVE
by William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The gloriosa superba or flame lily flower is not only glorious it is also symbolic of resilience and strength. I painted this during the horrible wildfires in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year. It is a sort of memento of what had been lost, but also of rebirth and recovery.

“Hand with Lover’s Eye and Flame Lilies” 8×6 inches, oil on aluminum panel. Copyright 2025 Fatima Ronquillo
For inquiries please contact Meyer Gallery Santa Fe

“Girl with Horned Lark” 10×8 inches, oil on aluminum panel. Copyright 2025 Fatima Ronquillo.
For inquiries please contact Meyer Gallery Santa Fe

A birdsong in winter is most welcome when all is bare and frosted. “Girl with Horned Lark” features a songbird I have painted before for no other reason than that it is lovely and cheerful. The embroidery on the girl’s top is based on one of the motifs on the Bacton altar cloth, which was recently discovered to have been a long lost skirt of Queen Elizabeth I.