Picture in Focus: The Virgin of Guadalupe by Lydia Garcia

May 28, 2017

Picture in Focus: The Virgin of Guadalupe by Lydia Garcia

My series on Marian images in May from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection comes to an end this week with another painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe; this time, from the American Southwest. On a recent trip to New Mexico in search of new works from the region's saint-makers, I travelled to Ranchos de Taos to see if Lydia Garcia still had a studio there. She had moved away, but I found this lovely little painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe by Garcia in the gift shop of the town's historic St. Francis of Assisi mission church, whose back view featured in the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. As on many of Garcia's holy images, there is a prayer in English and Spanish on the back: OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE, S(W)EET MOTHER, I LOVE YOU, AMEN. This new image by Garcia joins two others in the gallery of the New Mexican Saint-Makers page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)