Anthony Rodriguez

Art speak? Heck no.  Anthony Rodriguez is “regular people.”
 
“I don’t have deep art concepts or art vocabulary,” he says. “I tried to learn to talk like that, but it’s just not me.” Although he doesn’t identify with any particular tradition, others have suggested a connection between Anthony’s paintings and the Ashcan School.  He feels influenced by Edward Hopper and Mathew O. Barry and also resonates with the architectural aspects of Richard Serra’s sculpture.

“I try to break things down into simple forms that anyone would understand,” he says.

As a child, Anthony copied from his father’s drawings and watercolors and, later, from his favorite comic books.  He learned line, color and setting from Spiderman.  
Thinking that he might earn his living as an illustrator, he attended Kean University, where mentors Johann Jochnowitz and Tony Velez gave him early support. This led him to an MFA in painting at Montclair State University and also to printmaker Michael Metzger, another mentor.  It was Velez who inspired him to focus on Asbury Park, the subject of a long series evoking the taste of sea spray and the rhythms of the shore. Those paintings also led him to his current work, inspired by childhood images from Coney Island.

Recently, Anthony has been thinking of taking the visual rhythms of his shore paintings and combining them with his interest in music.  He’s considering film.  A defining moment for him came when, during a critique, Louise Bourgeois asked if he wrote poetry or music.  When he told her he was a musician she exclaimed ”Aha! You are a filmmaker!”

The Coney Island scene shots in his Barbara White Studio are in stark contrast to Vermont’s January weather, but the Vermont landscape has become familiar to Anthony, too: 2009 marks his third VSC residency. “I feel like I live here and forget I live in New Jersey,” he says.
 
Funded by Civil Society Institute, Anthony especially appreciates his studio residencies because private studio space at home impossible.  He says, “I value every hour. I want to be in the studio so much I can barely sleep.”