Why the Blood & Bones Series?

journalprocessThe Mother LineNew Mexico History
Written By Robbi Firestone

One never knows the force of ancestry: the stories, traumas, passions, or lies which like our own, tempt habit, faith and fate.

This series marries my inner landscape with my Mother Line: my thoughts, deeds, and actions. I paint the blood and bones I have inherited.

Does my lineage dictate my existance? Does my DNA wreack havoc on my decisions? Does my blood encourage me to heal? Does the marrow of my bones drive me to be an artist? Is my brain predestined for madness?

These paintings are is ode to Cornelia, Patricia, Emagene, Theresa, Faye… women who loved, despised and created me. They made me who I am and inspire who I will become.

My great great grandmother, Cornelia, journied east on the Old Santa Fe Trail.

But Why? The materials I choose for this series symbolize Cornelia’s journey: Coffee (breathing in brisk sunrises), charcoal (blaze of campfires), golden ink (prospecting?)….

An intimate iconography evolved through me. Visuals of red = death, black = fear. In gray I feel Cornelia’s aloneness. My graphite strikes canvas, lifting prayer to the turquoise skies. Deep cuts in thick white represent Cornelias commitments to her journey….

Why would Cornelia ride such a hard road East? To the unknown? Was she escaping trauma? Did she fall in love with a trapper? Was she a natural adventurer, like O'Keeffe? Or a Wanderer, hungry for eternal stimuli, like her descendant; Me?

This is the story of my great-great-grandmother's journey from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri.

I pray Cornelia Veronica Trujillo found love and hope there, as I have found in my life, made from her very blood and bones.

Robbi Firestone

Robbi Firestone is a contemporary American painter and conceptual artist working between New York City and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her practice spans three decades of sustained inquiry into how beauty, urgency, and ethical responsibility coexist in a fragile world.

Her paintings, in oil, acrylic, pastel, and graphite, emerge from sustained observation of landscape and sky, rooted in the high desert of New Mexico. These are not depictions of place but states of being: the land as inner weather, the horizon as meditation on presence and the radical act of sustained attention.

Her conceptual practice, most notably the 2026 series Existential Snacks: Food for Thought, deploys mass-produced consumer materials as a Trojan horse, seductive in their familiarity and disturbing in their implications, addressing ecological collapse, cultural numbness, and the human tendency to consume without thinking.

These are not two separate bodies of work. They are one philosophical position expressed in two registers: feeling as the ground from which thought becomes possible; thought as the ground from which action becomes necessary.

Firestone's work has received formal recognition from leading figures in the contemporary art world.

Louis Grachos, Executive Director of SITE Santa Fe, writes: "Robbi Firestone's Existential Snacks project is a brilliant contemporary extension of the longstanding tradition of Satirical Artworks. Innovative in her use of materials, Firestone's paintings/sculptures reveal a sense of humor, are clever and reveal a substantial insight into her subject matter which makes this series so successful."

Merry Scully, Head of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Contemporary Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art, wrote of The Infertility Project: "You are telling a powerful story...this project may take on a life of its own and take years to unfold," drawing comparison to Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party. The National Museum of Women in the Arts described her work as "a testament to the power of transforming personal pain into a benefit for the greater good."

The Infertility Project premiered at the United Nations in parallel with the Commission on the Status of Women. The project became the subject of a documentary film by Betsy Chasse, director of What the Bleep Do We Know, available on Amazon Prime.

Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Worth Magazine, the Boston Herald, the Huffington Post, and the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Firestone's work is held in distinguished private collections across the United States. She is currently represented by 203 Fine Art, Taos, New Mexico.

Studio visits are by appointment in New York City and Santa Fe.

https://www.FirestoneArt.com
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