Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick McGrath Muñiz.
Hi Patrick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in New York and raised in Puerto Rico, and that split has shaped everything since. I grew up between languages, between the island and the mainland, between the Catholic imagery of my childhood and the American consumer culture coming through the TV. I trained as a painter in Puerto Rico, spent formative years traveling and studying in Europe and Latin America, and completed my MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006, where my mature body of work took shape. I’ve been based in the Houston area for the past 12 years painting full time with gallery representation in Houston with Heidi Vaughan Fine Art and in Santa Fe with Evoke Contemporary. The work is now in seven public museum collections with more to come.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
A smooth road? No, and I’m skeptical of anyone in this profession who says otherwise. A painting career is built on long stretches of uncertainty punctuated by breakthroughs, and the financial reality rarely matches what a résumé suggests from the outside. The real challenge has been staying the course: refusing to chase trends, turning down opportunities that required compromising the work, and trusting that a slow, consistent studio practice outlasts whatever the market is rewarding that season. Twenty years in, I can say that bet has paid off, but it is still not guaranteed.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I paint allegorical paintings rooted in the Spanish Colonial Baroque tradition, the retablos and religious imagery I grew up with in Puerto Rico, redirected at the present. In my work, the saints are often ordinary people and the new gods are the ones we actually serve: brands, currency, screens, technology. I live and paint between worlds, an island’s past and an empire’s present, and that tension is the engine of everything I make. I’m known for retablo paintings reimagining the Virgin in contemporary contexts, for the ‘ship of fools’ as a recurring symbol of migration and faith, and for the Tarot Neocolonial de las Américas, a full deck of 78 cards published by U.S. Games. What I’m most proud of is a body of work that has entered museum collections without ever bending to the market. My largest solo museum exhibition, Nuevos Dioses, opens this November at the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum in Santa Fe. What sets me apart is the combination: old-master craft, Caribbean lens, contemporary subject. Very few painters are working that exact ground of past and present, and I’ve spent my whole career there.
What matters most to you? Why?
Three things, in order: my family, the integrity of the work, and leaving something behind that outlasts me. My wife and son come first, always. In the studio, what matters is that every painting is honest, that the craft holds up to the old masters I measure myself against, and that I never say something in paint I don’t actually believe in. And long term, I want the work to sit in museum collections and books where it can keep speaking after I’m gone. Everything else, trends, algorithms, market noise, is temporary. I paint about the things people worship. I try to be careful about what I worship myself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.patrickmcgrathmuniz.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickmcgrathmuniz/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickMcGrathMuniz/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcgrath-muniz-56133514/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@patrickmcgrathmunizart
Image Credits
Epiphany (2022) Oil and metal leaf on panel 19 x 33 inches. Available at Heidi Vaughan Fine Art, Houston, Texas.
Desencuentros (2023) Oil on triptych panel 36 x 19.5 inches. Available at Heidi Vaughan Fine Art, Houston, Texas.
Fire Rabbit (2018) Oil and gold leaf on panel 24 x 30 inches. Available.
Our Holy Woke Lady of Dreams and Delusions (2022) Oil on triptych panel 20.5 x 25 inches. Available.
Entre Tierras (2024) Oil on canvas 65 x 45 inches. Available at Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
