About me

  Jerry Rael was born near the Bosque de los Caballos in a small mid-house located in Jaroso, Colorado, about six miles north of the New Mexico line. I remember after we moved to Denver, my parents would return to the place that they considered their true home to visit my grandparents. This provided the opportunity for my brothers and I to play cowboys and Indians with my primos who lived in el tierra de mi corazon, Old San Acacio.     

 
I always enjoyed  playing the role of the Indian because to  me, they were the good guys, and it’s funny to discover later that my name is Geronimo in Spanish. I was deemed from the beginning to explore the roots of this mysterious name as well as my fascination with the group of people who back in the day, rode towards the little pueblito de San Acacio to attack the villagers until a vision in the clouds made  them stop in their tracks. This vision that the villager's claimed to be true is what drives my art and it is the mysterious element of that indian past that I'm trying to capture. It is ironic that one of our ancestors on my dad’s side was recognized and known as the “Indian  Protector” in his village somewhere in Mexico in the late 1600’s.

 The bright colors and the mixed emotions in Rael's subjects are represented with a quality that spells ghosts and they are intertwined in a world where one doesn't know which is real or which is fantasy. "My attempt  is to recreate the days and moments before and after that historical day." Some of Rael's paintings reveal an almost comical quality like his "Hollywood Indian" which to this viewer says "They promised us everything such as Hollywood and..." "To capture these Native Americans at a particular moment in time when everything "froze," like an imminent attack had  been anticipated, but something went wrong.. Death returns to bring me that cultural past, somehow now coming alive in my paintings."