“”People (my family included) still question my determination for leaving realism far behind. During the late eighties, while painting L’Élue, a centenary tribute series to Nijinsky, the god of dance, my “realistic” paint application and gestures, inspired by the movement he was about, just wanted to explode, to push into the unknown, what I personally feel our obligation as artists of all genres is. I love the classics and without them none of what follow would be possible. I had my formation and basic training in and out of school, but comes a moment of realization that one has to travel further. I’ve been traveling ever since, finding my work to be about light, as in Orion The Hunter defending paradise, or in Courage, a work about hope and the eminent light at the end of the tunnel: Dum Spiro Spero.”

—Ritchard Rodriguez