Samuel Rodriguez’s creative passion sparked early on in his life. As a kid, he remembers being obsessed with cartoons and album covers, which might explain his fascination with both illustration and graphic design.
“I got into visual arts through watching Looney Tunes, The Simpsons, and various cartoons through the 80’s,” said Rodriguez in an interview with Highlark Magazine. “I also used to stare at all the album covers in my uncle’s record collection.”
But it wasn’t until he was introduced to graffiti that he fully embraced his creative side. Based out of San José, California, Rodriguez learned the basis to his art through the graffiti scene, and later decided to expand his studies by pursuing a Bachelor in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts. “My eventual introduction to graffiti was what really shot up my passion,” he admits.
These days, his work relies on both his formal and unformal training, with most of his work a mixture between portrait art and street art. His practice includes two types of portraiture styles, to which he refers to as Topographical Portraiture and Type Faces.
The Topographical Portraits are created by stylizing a portrait with topographical lines and shapes, in a similar manner to those found through images on geographical maps. The Type Faces, on the other hand, incorporate typography and portraiture.
Though Rodriguez might have started out with his work exhibited in the street, these days his work is presented within more formal settings, which include public art spaces, museums, companies, galleries, and editorial publications. And with some 50,000 followers on Instagram, he’s one to watch out for!
