Max Rodriguez

Max Rodriguez is the 2010 recipient of the Curator's Award for his painting Drifting Away at the juried art show "Wide Open" at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. He was also a featured artist at the new PICTURE Cultural Art Center at the University of California, Dominguez Hills.

Max is a diverse artist with three distinct bodies of work: abstracts, landscapes and figurative. Max shifts between abstract works at one time to landscape or figurative paintings at other times. He works to elevate his abstracts to the more sublime level of landscapes and to give his landscapes that conscious spirituality of abstraction.

His landscapes have a feeling of openness, and an important element of every painting is the infinite point -- that place where ocean meets sky, water becomes air, earth becomes space. The abstract paintings are inspired by elements of nature and earth at their fundamental and organic levels. Contrasts between textures and colors tell most of the story, but the paintings’ remaining chapters are left for the viewer to write his or her own interpretation of what they see.

Max's complex process involves working with plaster to create a detailed surface textures and imagery in relief. The imagery evolves through layering and removing the medium in order to evoke references to natural environments and elements of nature.

Influences of abstract expressionism infuse his work, completing a balance between the recognizable natural element and the abstract interpretation of such elements. The layered paints add depth and patinas to the surfaces and create an aged translucence and organic feeling of something that has been worn down over time, and yet the aging and wear are meticulously beautiful.

Max Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba. He was exiled with his family to New Orleans at the age of seven. His childhood years in these cultures had a profound effect on the way he views his life and his art. He values the nostalgia of storytelling, using strong, vibrant colors, aging surfaces with crackles and patinas to blur the lines between the past, present and future.

His memories of his childhood, both in Havana and New Orleans, and his study of modern day Cuban culture and architecture bring forth imagery that is both empirical and metaphorically charged and creates finely nuanced narratives in perception and memory that withstand the test of time.

He began his study of Fine Arts at the University of New Orleans, later transferring to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art College for Graphic Design. In the early 1990s, Max began his career as a decorative painter by designing and painting murals and faux finishes in homes and businesses. Max moved to Palm Springs, California, in 2008.

Academy of Art College, San Francisco
University of New Orleans

acrylic, landscapes, botanicals, abstracts, graphic, figurative