To me, art is something that comes with inside from your soul, an inspiration like a breath
of air when you breathe out and breathe in, you know, it's something natural like that.
This episode of Beyond the Gallery is brought to you by Great Southwest, located in Colorado,
Springs, Colorado.
My name's Peter Ortega.
I live here in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I'm a folk art artist, woodcarver.
I've been woodcarving for over 30 years, which I learned from my dad.
As a teenager, like any other teenager, I was real interested in cars and that.
I went to school for an auto technician, but I was always carving, even though I had my
own auto mechanic shop and stuff like that, I was always doing this work.
I just enjoyed doing this better.
I liked the whole feel of it.
I liked dealing with the people.
I just knew this is what I wanted to do instead of turning the wrench as they put it all the
time.
It's my passion.
Either I or my son will say, Dad, we need to go for wood.
So we'll make a plan and decide where we're going.
If you're walking down a trail or something or on the side of the lake and you pick up
different wood, you look at it.
This looks interesting.
Sometimes it looks like something right away.
This could be a real cool angel, just the way the shape of it is.
Sometimes that wood just looks interesting.
We take it anyway and I don't know what it's going to be.
It could sit there in my shop for a year and a half before I could see what I'm going to
make out of it.
Finally, I look at it and I see something in there that I haven't seen before.
I remember being discouraged a lot when I first went full time doing this because sometimes
it gets very, very hard to depend on making a living, but I'm just glad I stayed with
it and kept doing it.
I think that's what got me at the point where I am right now.
Each piece brings a certain satisfaction, especially when people buy my stuff.
When I see the look on their face, it makes them happy, which makes me happy.
I like doing the religious saints and that because it gives me a certain feeling inside.
To me, a saint is our people.
People are saints.
It's not a saint that is ordained a saint or whatever because in God's eyes, we're all
saints.
It's become my life and I feel lucky that I've been able to do this for so long.
Also, that's rewarding and I'll be doing it as long as I can.
I'll probably never stop as long as I can do it, I'll do it.
It's a blessing that's been giving and giving and hopefully I'll be able to give the same
blessings to my kids like my dad did to me and so on and so on.
That would really be a blessing, keep the tradition going.
This episode of Beyond the Gallery is brought to you by Great Southwest, located in Colorado
Springs, Colorado.
To learn more about Peter Ortega and to see some of his work, please visit GreatSouthWestArt.com.
