Born in Colombia, Cristina Rodriguez, has been living and working in London for several years now. A traveller of the world as much as of painting, she offers us a world of painting with a poetic and musical accent created from imagination, joy and serenity, so light that it can cross the boundaries of the visible and the real like a dream hanging on the edge of the imaginary, between magic and truth.

Passionate for adventure and travel, the artist explores people, cultures and traditions, in addition to places and landscapes, with a lively interest, transforming them into an endless source of stimuli. She overflows with inspiration when she looks at various elements of the world around her: these are observed, but also analysed, re-examined and described with passion and figurative emphasis - simplified, indeed, but with enormous imagination.

Rodriguez’s expressive language is studiously and intentionally simple because it is designed to reach as wide a public as possible with a message of peace, serenity and joy: we have been given an extraordinary capacity to dream, carrying our desires to a wonderful dimension. These paintings are a result of this where the resources of the imagination, of form and of colour, are used to guide the creative process and lead to an intriguing world consisting of settings, cities and landscapes where the atmospheres are infused with a sense of tranquillity and light-heartedness, while the figures seem to rise and fall in the deep blue of the sky and water. The power of the colour, pure and intense, increases the element of magic and fantasy in the works.

Looking at a picture by this artist is like entering a fairy tale where every element is deprived of its true weight, space becomes infinite and time is paused in moments of total happiness and serenity. Through the fairytale feeling that always accompanies her and excludes any wickedness and cruelty, the artist communicates the way she thinks and feels about life through fine, fluid and intense painting, avoiding the pressure of leaving the free interpretation of subjects and themes from everyday life and memory to the imagination. She presents her painting not with the intention of explaining these things or endowing them with mysterious significance, but rather to give them an intimate and personal value. Her art - tangible, spontaneous, not enigmatic - shows marvellous positivity with a capacity to give new meaning to human life and our common existence.

Transformed into hymns to life and explicit invitations to give ourselves up to the dreams and magic that surround reality, Cristina Rodriguez’s paintings touch vibrant feelings and intimate imaginings that resonate within the mind of anyone willing to be bewitched by their intensely captivating power.
 

Paola Trevisan, 2010