Salvador Rodriguez was born in Tijuana, Mexico. Perhaps inadvertently, he has painted and studied landscapes almost all his life. Salvador lived his childhood in the countryside not far from the city. From a very young age he used to run in the hills, climb mountains and spend a long time contemplating the landscape until sunset where he liked to keep all the details of the landscape in his memory and paint and draw them at home.In high school Salvador first demonstrated his skills in painting without any previous studies. He participated and won first place at a local and national level, and thanks to this won a scholarship to attend drawing classes at the local college for a year. On the other hand, his interest and love for physics and science led him to be awarded a scholarship to attend college at ITESM in Monterrey where he obtained a degree in Engineering Computer Science in 1992.
“I pursued my career for over 23 years, traveling and visiting many places but never missed an opportunity to study landscaping and painting…even so, my production was very small. It wasn’t until I arrived in Austin in 2014 that I was able to really immerse myself in art and produce over 50 big paintings in a few years and be part of many exhibitions.
I love Texas and my favorite landscapes to paint are deserts, especially Big Bend where the mountains and sands are the frame of my paintings and along with the blue sky and its capricious clouds create a composition that gives me that energy and tranquility of balance that I tried to put in my paintings.
Also, my interest and passion for the study of the life of plants of different species and of trees have led me to participate in the art of Bonsai. I have immersed myself in Bonsai associations which have allowed me to understand and appreciate the tree’s life.
My work is the result of a meticulous study of nature; plants, rocks, clouds in detail that can be appreciated in the composition … and the balance of its strong and soft colors, which produce pleasure and tranquility when contemplating it.
My inspiration stems mostly from the landscapes of Big Bend and the desert of Texas and Northern Mexico, but I am also influenced by surrealism, and I consider art as an agent of change on social consciousness.
Each painting is a project of months or years of work that begins with a trip and study of the place, and ends in my workshop. After adding compositions in skies, plants and rocks to give balance, and before creating a plant on the canvas, I like to study them and know them previously, as well as their ecosystem and especially the history and myths of the place, which I try to capture in my works. So beyond trying to reproduce a photographic copy is a composition and recreation of the essence of the place with native plants.
My most used technique now is acrylic on canvas, for practicality, since it dries quickly and allows me mobility, but I have also worked with oil and more frequently watercolors and many drawings for my sketches.
Since my arrival in Austin 8 years ago I have painted over 46 artworks that have been exhibited mostly at EAST and WEST Austin Studio tours and other Art Gallery in Austin.”
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