Samuel Rodriguez’s art is a mixture of graffiti, typography, and portraiture. Based out of San José, California, he started out as a self-taught graffiti artist and has later decided to expand his studies by pursuing a Bachelor in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.
“I feel lucky to have studied as an artist in the streets and later in a college,” he told Acclaim Magazine. “In doing so, I always felt like I had to keep my artistry of the streets and love of letters separate from what I was learning in school. I used to separate what I could create, so, for example, I would tell myself ‘this is for graffiti’, and ‘that is for the galleries’, today I don’t. Now I am combining my love of everything together, which you will begin to see unfold in the years to come.”
Rodriguez categorizes his art into two types of portraiture: Topographical Portraiture and Type Faces. While his Topographical Portraits are made by stylizing a portrait with topographical lines and shapes, reminding of geographic maps, his Type Faces incorporate typography and portraiture.
His unique style of painting took the art world by storm, and his pieces are now shown in public art spaces, museums, companies, and galleries, as well as published in editorial publications. Though best experienced in person, you can also follow his work online through his Instagram page.
