Today we’d like to introduce you to Hegina Rodrigues. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Hegina Rodrigues, a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil is a painter who lives and works in her studio in West Palm Beach, Florida. Rodrigues’s history as an artist has been a primarily self-taught passion. With no exposure to the art world as a child, her work has developed through decades of the desire to follow her painting passion and persistence. Experimenting with all mediums from inks, waxes, pastels and oils, her techniques begins with applying layers and layers of paints to her bare canvasses, wood and textiles. She studied at the New York Artist League and participated in workshops learning from inspiring artists but always held strongly to her own style of creating. Extensively exhibited in the United States and abroad her works are held by many collectors including Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page in the UK.
A recipient of the Dina Baker Award for Mature Women in 2018 with a solo exhibition at The Cultural Council of Palm Beach Council in Florida in 2019.
Selected exhibitions:
Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Art Fair
The Latin American Women’s Artist Exhibit
Spectrum
Art Miami
Boca Raton Museum of Art’s All Florida
The Provincetown Art Association and Museum
I am very excited at this moment because recently I have embarked on an abstract and landscape journey, stepping outside my comfort zone. Both styles go side by side as I feel the impulse to experiment with other ways of creating that shows my progress as an artist. Abstract as in mark making is a more free and loose way of expressing and my abstract landscapes are a way of training my eyes and imagination to let the creative spirit take me to a place that I have been to or would like to go to in my mind. This new form of expressing is opening new horizons and taking my art into a new dimension eventually guiding me to combine my passion for the figure and abstraction on a different way so that my work continues to evolve.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I believe we create our own head struggles and I create many of those for myself on a daily basis and every experience in life is a challenge but in general, I have been very fortunate with my experience as an artist, I find that doors have mostly been open to me and that my art has been well accepted so I can truly say that I haven’t had too many struggles outside the internal ones.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
What sets me apart from others is my unique ways of representing the figure. I am an abstract figurative painter that portrays emotions on a deep level so the viewer either connects with my work on an emotional level and appreciates it, or just walks past it without understanding it. My paintings are portals of emotions. Painting for me is a way of calling into being something hidden inside, it is the process from pulling from within. Spreading paints, inks and other mediums onto my canvas allows me to bring life into form and to work from deep subconscious level within my personal feelings.
I paint simultaneously allowing each painting to find the echo of the other. I mostly focus on the depiction of the figure, reflecting my own identity. My figures are self-absorbed, the themes recur, and my figures have reference to current events woven together with past experiences. As I work to free the figures within the paint, I try to liberate sensitivities within the matter, I express emotions, my own voice and my private language. It is my deepest way of communicating.
The everyday pulse of life inspires me. My art embraces every moment- an acute awareness of light, form and expression from within.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Many people have inspired me and continue inspiring everyday in my art world starting from the very beginning to the present moment. People that believe that I was doing something worth showing, worth continuing, galleries and museums that accepted my work and mostly collectors that love my work enough to buy it and have it in the walls of their beautiful homes, they have been of amazing emotional and financial support.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.heginarodrigues.com
- Instagram: @heginarodrigues
- Facebook: heginaridrigues
Image Credits
Steve Horan
