Anita Rodriguez,
a native of Taos, New Mexico, has enjoyed
twenty years of synthesizing a wide range of cultural influences and
interests in a unique painting style full of meaning, play and detail.
Her expressive skeletons, becoming a trademark of her work,
are inspired by Hispanic Penitente Art and Mexican artist Guadalupe
Posada. Her brilliant colors definitely evoke Mexico (where she lives),with
colonial architecture, scenes from curandero rituals and the lives of
Crypto-Jews and the Spanish Diaspora.
Anita’s Chicana roots emerge in the Low Rider series and the traditional
folk art form of nichos with doors and little altars of favorite New
Mexican saints. She also paints a humorous, alternative lifestyle friendly
erotic series. The paintings are further enriched with symbolism from
the Tarot, Mahayana Buddhism, Jungian psychology - masked dancers, tigers,
monkeys, deer, bear, and iguanas, all mixing with friends and neighbors.
The pervasive atmosphere of her magical world, from the desert landscapes
to the jungle scenes, from the transparent interiors to the mysterious
streets, she calls “mystical surrealism” – inspired
by the magical realism of Juan Rulfo and Garcia Marquez . The multicultural
iconography globalizes her spaces, erasing national borders and the
boundaries separating spiritual traditions, the living from the dead,
and animals from different continents.
In her own words, “Painting is my antidote to the trauma of being
globalized. I choose creativity and beauty over destruction and violence.
My paintings heal me and create path for others - like little doors
that people can hang on their walls that lead them to a refuge, to a
sanctuary - and alternative paradigms and provocative ideas."
