Art Scene & Seen: Watching an Artist Blossom, Romería Louise Mancera

By Meryl Truett

Years ago, when I was living and working in Savannah, Georgia, I was fortunate to be included in an article about artists to watch and collect. I remember what it meant to have an arts writer look at my work at that particular moment in my career and say, essentially, pay attention to this artist. Now I find myself on the other side of that equation.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to watch the development of the artist Romería Louise Mancera. I have watched her experiment, take risks, gain confidence, and gradually develop a visual language of her own. You might say I have watched her blossom—pun intended, considering how deeply the natural world runs through her work. Today, Romería’s work moves confidently between abstract painting, collage, and mixed-media construction. Nature is often the starting point, but rarely the destination. Flowers, leaves, pods, branches, and other organic forms appear, disappear, overlap, and dissolve into abstraction. She is less interested in representing nature literally than in responding to its rhythms, colors, shapes, and emotional resonance.

Her process is intuitive and responsive. She builds her paintings gradually, allowing one decision to suggest the next. Translucent veils of color overlap with painted and drawn marks; shapes emerge and are partially obscured. In some works, recognizable botanical imagery floats within fields of abstraction. In others, she cuts, fragments, weaves, and rearranges materials, creating a dialogue between the geometry of a grid and the irregularity of natural forms. The results can be wonderfully varied. One painting may be dense and immersive, filled with overlapping organic shapes, while another is spare and architectural, allowing white space to become as important as the materials themselves.

Yet there is a recognizable sensibility connecting them: layering, transparency, an affection for botanical forms, and, above all, color. For her, color is not simply decorative. It carries energy and emotion. Deep blues and greens sit beside flashes of coral, orange, pink, and red. Transparent areas allow earlier layers to remain visible, giving the work a sense of history and movement.

Romería holds a degree in Interior Design from the University of North Arizona, and I see traces of that background in her instinct for composition, balance, texture, and spatial relationships. After several years working in design, she turned her attention to art fulltime. Her practice now extends beyond painting into ceramics, collage, and furniture design, but her fascination with material, surface, color, and the natural world remains a constant.

Growing up in San Miguel and educated in the United States, her life and her work span and incorporate elements of both countries and cultures. Her exhibition career is relatively recent, but it is gathering momentum. In February 2026, Romería was selected to participate in BADA México during México City Art Week and was subsequently invited to return for the 2027 edition. Her work has since appeared in exhibitions in San Miguel de Allende, including The Circle Widens at the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery and SOMOS ARTE. She is currently exhibiting with Manuk Gallery at Fábrica La Aurora, and this September her work is part of International Program México at GTZ Gallery in Dallas.

I have watched Romería work through ideas, experiment with materials, discard what isn’t working, and learn to trust her instincts. There is an important difference between learning how to make art and discovering what you want to say with it. I have watched her make that transition.

Her work is still evolving, as it should be. That is part of the excitement of discovering an artist at this stage: you aren’t simply looking at where she has arrived. You are watching where she goes next.

And in Romería’s case, the blossoming has only just begun.

Meryl Truett, artist, teacher, and director of Made in SMA

Studio and Workshops: www.meryltruett.com IG @trumeryl