Hello!

I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico from Grant, Florida in 1999, on the heels of my father, who moved here from Denver to sell so-called “primitive art”, mostly South American, in 1997.

My father Dan McLister was a waterbed salesman, a bar owner, a clam farmer, and an Indian art collector and dealer. He was passionate, perennially broke, and always hungry— hungry for new experiences, hungry for finding the kind of information that leads to truth. We are alike in this way.

In the 1970s, dad traveled along the Ucayali River in the Amazon jungle, living with the Shipibo-Conibo people and collecting pre-colonial artwork. On some journeys, he was joined by my mother Mary Lynn Madley, a poet, artist, and nuclear disarmament activist. My parents collected traditionally “Indian” artworks: weavings, clay figurines, and headdresses. They also collected canoe paddles, carved wood wedding ceremony benches, insanely cool blow dart guns, beaded lizard effigies, thousands of exotic feathers and much, much more—most of this collection was sold by my father out of financial necessity in the 1980s. My father looked for money in clam and oyster farming before leaving Florida for good in the early 1990s.

I made it to New Mexico as a high schooler, gave birth to my son during my junior year at the College of Santa Fe in 2006, and graduated in 2009 with a business degree. I began a stable if stultifying accounting job at a locally-owned electrician company off of Richards Avenue.

During one of my somewhat dispiriting daily lunch perambulations around the office park in late 2010, I wandered into THE Magazine, where I was greeted by owner and publisher Guy Cross. We talked at length about one of my favorite subjects in college: postwar American abstractionism. I found myself visiting Guy’s office daily, and one day he said I should write for him. I said sure. He sent me to Zane Bennet to review a show of Helen Frankenthaler prints. I fell madly in love with her and my article was published the very next week. I also fell in love with everything about being a published writer; a published art writer.

In between writing assignments, I worked a 40-hour week at various downtown galleries in Santa Fe. There was a stint at the famous Lewallen Galleries in the Railyard, then Peyton Wright on Palace Avenue, then Mark White on Canyon Road. I exited the commercial gallery world several years back.

So much has happened over the past 15 years of my life as a freelance art critic, but it’s a gig I’ve ultimately stuck with. I’m still here writing about Santa Fe for Santa Feans. I was married in May to my husband Jason and changed my name from Iris McLister to Iris Fitzpatrick. You can find my work in New Mexico Magazine, The Santa Fe New Mexican, and The Santa Fe Reporter, some of it dating back to 2011, all of it under my maiden name until summer 2024; I also maintain an active career as a private essayist for artist statements, press releases, and book introductions.

Thank you for reading and I can’t wait to share more with you.

xo

if