Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla

I am a Puerto Rican painter currently based in New York City. I am a self-trained artist, with a doctorate in economics (Harvard, ‘22) and a day job in data science at a large technology firm.

Like my father (a landscape painter who worked in healthcare by day) I grew up understanding art as something you return to out of curiosity and joy. Over time, what began as a hobby has evolved into a more consistent art practice centered on themes of perception, identity, and the underlying, often hidden, mechanisms that shape our emotional and psychologically-complex worlds.

Working primarily in oils, my figurative and semi-abstract pieces blend realism with moments of surreal or symbolic disruption. My work reflects an ongoing curiosity about the forces behind what we think we see, a sensibility shaped by both my doctoral training in behavioral, experimental, and identity economics and my Puerto Rican heritage.

I am currently developing a growing body of work that includes portraiture, narrative compositions, and small experiments in abstraction.

PhD in Economics, Harvard University (2022)
MA in Economics, Harvard University (2020)
BA in Financial Economics, Columbia University (2015)