From The Ground Up Painting

Filipino-American artist Marianne Angeli Rodriguez is an abstract contemporary painter based in Covington, Louisiana. Due to her parents’ work with the United Nations, Rodriguez spent 15 years living abroad in West Africa, Central America, Europe & Asia before landing in the US. Rodriguez went on to study in New York where she obtained a B.A. in media studies & anthropology from the City University of New York at Hunter College, and a degree in fashion design from FIT. Rodriguez’s distinguishable vibrant, large-scale contemporary abstract paintings have garnered the artist recognition and are widely collected throughout the US. Yielding collaborations with Anthropologie, Framebridge, AllModern, The Jungalow, and Kit & Ace. Rodriguez’s work is on permanent display in numerous public installations, including the Sloan Kettering Cancer Centers in NY, St. Tammany Parish Hospital, Southern Hotel Covington, Magnolia Hotel New Orleans, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Chicago, Nolé restaurant New Orleans, and the New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport. Her gallery is in the historic district of downtown Covington, LA, where she lives with her husband and three adorable rescue pets. //Artist Statement// My international upbringing is the central influence in my work and how I view the world. Our family home was always filled with art and handicrafts made by the local artisans of each new city we migrated to. Folk art, paintings, wooden sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, textiles, and various curios all served to ignite my imagination. I’m interested in tradition, symbolism, language, and the ever-changing symbiosis of communities and nature. My work is an eclectic concoction formed from memories of the vibrant sights, scents, flavors, rituals, stories and people I’ve encountered. The nostalgia of a tropical climate is a constant undercurrent in my process. I treat each canvas with an intuitive approach, never pre-planned. I allow each brush stroke to lead into the next, and each layer to form upon the other, playfully obscuring where lines begin and end. I aim to create harmonious frictions with bold color and contrast between hues, mixed media, shapes, and patterns that overlap and eventually resolve themselves within the composition. The imagery I create is my interpretation of our complex, multi-layered human experience in both our interconnectedness to one another and to our environment.