Chris Santa Maria

American, 1982

Chris Santa Maria (b. 1982 Phoenix, AZ) is a visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His studio practice stems from two primary concerns: large-scale paper collages that critique American socio-political tensions vis-à-vis the media; and smaller collages that are dense with imagery that harmonize the fields of nature, culture, art, and science.

In 2025, Santa Maria began a series of watercolor monotypes with masterprintmaker Phil Sanders that are influenced by the abstract forms and colors that materialize in his smaller works. The process of printmaking has allowed Santa Maria to layer multiple plates on a single sheet of paper, creating dynamic arrangements of translucent colors that interact and overlap in unpredictable ways. “My collages piece together tiny fragments of sublime natural imagery with random cultural ephemera in order to create larger abstractions out of the formal similarities between those two seemingly antithetical sources. The practice of studying these visual connections develops my understanding of them, whereas the prints have a deep spiritual relationship to the interconnectedness of the collages, like an echo or some kind of visual déjà vu projected through another medium. In some sense, my work has reached a new beginning through printmaking that takes me back to where I started with collage.”

Santa Maria has exhibited widely in the U.S.; in New York City at Jim Kempner Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Momenta Art, in Arizona at the Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, eye lounge contemporary art space, and in California at Pence Gallery UC Davis. His work is in prominent private collections including such as Beth Rudin DeWoody, Stephen Dull, and Marnie Pillsbury, as well as public collections such as the New York Public Library and Friends for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE). He received his BFA in Painting from Arizona State University in 2006 and was invited to the Yaddo artist residency the following year. In 2025 he attended Jason Andrew’s Norte Maar artist residency in the Adirondacks. Since 2008, he has proudly served as the Director of Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Weyl gallery in New York City.

Courtesy of the artist