Hurricane Irma Trajectory Watercolor Series

The Hurricane Irma Trajectory watercolor series is comprised of fifteen works painted by the artist through the course of the week when this massive storm incited a panic in South Florida and the surrounding Caribbean islands, as it made landfall on the coast of Barbuda on September 6 as a Category 5. Beginning with 9-7-17, Rodríguez turns the natural element of water that is feared during hurricane season into the very force that catalyzes the imagery and scenes shown in the series. Through the course of seven days, we witness the uncertainty of a tropical cyclone and the havoc it may wreck on the city of Miami through the swirling blues, greens, and deep reds of Floridian landscapes and their minute details. From Rodríguez himself, standing against the calm before the storm, to the animistic illustration of wind as a face blowing or the sweeping turmoil of palm trees and collapsing buildings, the viewer is taken on a turbulent path through the week the storm was projected to sweep over the city of Miami. Rather than being able to use studio light to complete the series, Rodríguez was forced to use natural light as a result of the power outages that struck households across the metropolis, and through this use of natural light, the crisp clarity of the hues seen in the works is visually palpable.

Though missing the city and officially landing in Cudjoe Key, Florida on September 10 as a Category 4, Hurricane Irma’s aftermath was felt significantly in places like the Florida Keys, with fourteen deaths and more than 25% of homes destroyed, and 65% suffering extensive damage. Within the last work of the series, titled 9-13-17 II, the trinity of figures, of a bird, a beetle, and Rodríguez himself, stand tall against a plain colored background, with Rodriguez holding onto a toppled home with a bold sun standing bright and yellow against the cool watercolor tones. It’s the aftermath and culmination of a natural disaster whose effects can still be felt to this day.

Watercolor Series of Arcimboldo’s Ghosts

“Few painters today have the pictorial and literary culture of Rodríguez, and this is embedded in the visual conversations present in his oils and watercolors,” notes Alejandro Anreus, Ph.D. in his essay, “A Painter and His Ghosts.” With the same title as the solo exhibition held at LnS Gallery from November 2018 to January 2019, the watercolor series of Arcimboldo’s Ghosts pays homage to the predecessors of art that inspire Rodriguez continuously, from Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo to American photographer Diane Arbus. The imagery of fruits and vegetables that make up the heads of each of the figures, from a tomato to an avocado and two bananas humorously sticking out of a figure’s ears, give the works a lighthearted touch amidst the reverence that Rodríguez pays to his inspirations. The candid strokes of watercolor are loose in the backgrounds of the works but yet controlled and restrained in the details of each figure, from the grenade of the tribute to Diane Arbus’s Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park to the cane of Gustave Courbet’s A node with a cane. The figurines in each part of the sextet that comprise the series stand each independently from one another, though each share a common factor: they are the manifestations of a devotion to art and the masters who have paved the way for artists today.