Ritchard Rodriguez attended SVA in New York City as a fine arts major, studying sculpture under Jonathan Borofsky, photography under Cora Wright Kennedy and most importantly, painting and illustration under Gilbert L. Stone, one of the most prestigious painter/illustrators in the US until his passing in 1983. “Gil gave us all a candid and very realistic feel of the trade from technique to meeting tight deadlines, preparing us for the demands within the ever changing editorial and advertising worlds. Early on, he was key to my understanding of a client's problems and needs, each challenge providing me with a palette to creatively produce a solution”.

With time on his hands, Rodriguez decided to venture out of New York, first heading west by road towards Colorado’s Rockies, where he discovered a vast country, warping NY’s more rigid symmetry with a broader palette, seen at a greater elevation. Later, in the 1980’s, he lived and worked in Europe (Berlin, Hamburg, Paris), acquiring languages (five in all) that he finds himself toggling between today. During this period, alongside his diligent passion for painting, Rodriguez took on assignments as editorial portraitist that always allowed him to conjure up a creative solution.

Rodriguez is a painter with a reputation for exploiting light, color and emotion, creating images in which viewers find an immediate ardent connection with. Lusty brushwork and a spontaneous approach are the distinguishing features of his painting, with a bold use of color articulated with strong movement and light. His work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide including Berlin, Paris, Aspen and his native New York City, hanging in a number of private collections.

“I often call what I do paint application, working quickly, wet into wet, suggestively, otherwise keeping it abstract, expressive, pushing the paint, provoking it, all the while drawing, writing, keeping my eyes fixed on a spot, rarely watching my meandering hand. As ever a music buff though, feeling I've developed a sense for hearing in color, I enter a space shedding my ego's skins, switching the mind off (yes, music can make that possible), a nirvana between the heart and hand, feeling anything is possible. That "entered space" has its initial spark. In my case, it seems to arrive in the form of a painting's title: a word or phrase, found, borrowed or invented, that begs to be painted. Each title or theme is followed with sets of invented instructions and a palette. Then there is that which I listen to, what I call horizontal music, traveling from left to right along a plane and then back again. Ballet music, as an example, can work that way, while opera, on the other hand being so vertical and dramatic, cannot. All of the above is that simple a process, and has been with me since I can remember.”

This year, Motéma is launching artist Charnett Moffett’s CD, The Art of Improvisation, featuring art by Rodriguez on and within the package. Motéma president, Jana Herzen, knowing full well the similar work methods chosen by both artists, sparked warmly to uniting these talents in one experience.