Today we’d like to introduce you to DANIEL RODRIGUEZ.
Hi DANIEL, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I actually started as an architect. I studied it in college, and honestly, that training never really left me; it’s still in everything I make. But the truth is, I started painting during the pandemic. The world felt like it was collapsing, and I couldn’t do anything about it, so I needed somewhere to put all that. Painting became my way of venting when words just weren’t enough.
What’s stayed with me from architecture is this idea of Gestalt, figure-ground, balance, how the eye reads space. I didn’t plan to use it in painting, but it’s just how my brain works now. My style ended up being about lines, single lines that try to capture a feeling, a body, a moment. I leave a lot unsaid on purpose, because I want people to see themselves in it, not just me.
There was a period, around 2023, when I stopped painting completely for almost a year and a half. I had kind of lost myself; I was giving everything to everyone else, and there was nothing left for me to paint from. When I came back to it, it wasn’t really a choice; I just needed to.
Right now, I’m based in Brooklyn, with a couple of exhibitions coming up in 2026. My work has found its way to collectors in New York, Miami, Madrid, London, and Ecuador. For me, it’s always been about holding onto a moment before it disappears.
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?
Yes, of course. The road wasn’t easy at all.
In the beginning, I was the only one who believed in me and my work. It sounded so crazy, almost senseless, to put my emotions, feelings, and memories into lines. At first there was no clear idea behind it, it was all new, and even I doubted myself.
Then, little by little, things started to shift. Money was tight, I didn’t have any, so I started playing with credit just to get my first canvases and paints out into the world. But slowly, people started to notice. They liked the work, they bought it, and bit by bit, I started believing in myself a little more too.
Then I moved to the US, and I couldn’t be a full-time artist anymore. I got a job as a barista, and little by little, I started building a name for myself in Miami too. Eventually I moved again, starting from zero, but this time in New York. And now, after almost four years here, I’m finding my way back to believing in myself again. More people are starting to want to work with me, and I feel really blessed.
In 2023, I was forced to stop painting completely, I was working three jobs just to break even every month, so little by little, painting fell away. It wasn’t until the end of 2024 that I returned to it, with even more energy than before.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
After six years of doing this, what I do has changed drastically, many times. In the beginning, I was painting clouds. Then I moved into perspectives and architectural sites. From there, I started taking the same lines I used in architecture and using them my own way, without following any rules, and that’s how I began creating my own language. I started painting human figures as a way to express my emotions, feelings, repressed thoughts, memories, everything. Even animals, in that same style.
Now, more and more, I’m connected to this idea of memory, of capturing time and moments through one of the most ephemeral things we have: flowers. That’s what I’ve been focused on, making memories with different people, different friends, and that’s what’s changed my life and makes my work unique. Even if you’re focused on painting a particular flower bouquet, it will always be different, because it’s attached to my own specific moment in time.
I started painting this way because I wanted to be able to remember things in the future that I would otherwise forget.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
With the introduction of AI, we’ve seen how a masterpiece can technically be produced in a fraction of the time. But for me, the real question isn’t how fast, it’s what is actually changing because of it, and what we can do to shift the system in our favor. I think the answer is to become more human, not less. To let ourselves make mistakes, to experience life fully, to feel things, and then put those things into the work. AI can take care of the monotonous, repetitive parts. So let it. That frees us to focus on the things only we are capable of creating, the ones that come from having lived.
As for gallery spaces, that’s something that’s always been in motion, and my guess is that traditional spaces will eventually drift toward something more technological. But honestly, I don’t know. Anything can happen. That uncertainty doesn’t worry me the way it used to.
Right now, I’m less focused on predicting all of that and more focused on the creating itself, and on living. On making more memories, paying attention, and being present. Because I know that eventually my art will change. It always does. It will become more and more different, and not even I can tell you what will come out of it yet. And I’m okay with that. The point right now is to take action, to keep moving, and to stop seeing technology as an enemy. I’d rather treat it as an ally, something that can carry us to further places, so that we, as humans, get to spend more of our time on the one thing it can’t do for us: being human.
Pricing:
- DMs for more information
- I have format in all sizes
- from 9×12 inches to 48×60
Contact Info:
