George Rodez was born in Manhattan, New York on March 20, 1957. Soon after in 1959, because of a family illness, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Havana, Cuba. He reunited with his parents in 1961 and now calls Miami, Florida home.
Although he began his career as a mechanical engineer, art has been his passion since the age of thirteen. He now dedicates himself solely to painting and since 1992 has exhibited his work throughout various museums and galleries nationally and internationally.
Rodez is a self-taught artist whose strength is his diversity, allowing himself the freedom to create multiple bodies of work, each vastly different from the other. In his experiences with his mother's mental illness, including multiple personalities, Rodez observed that each personality had a different strength and function, each serving a unique purpose. Rodez has taken that lesson and incorporated it into his art, with each body of work providing him different experiences and allowing all his personalities to show through.
Rodez supports many charitable causes in his community through his work. On November 21, 2006, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recognized Rodez and stated, “The dedication shown to the arts and your involvement in fund raising for charitable organizations through your generous art contributions is truly commendable.”
Artist Statement
Rodez is quoted as saying: "My art is a reflection of my intimate experience living with my mother's chronic mental illness, which taught me that within diverse personalities lie unique strengths. This lesson has driven me to create various bodies of work, each distinct from the other. Through these creations, I explore the complex interplay of emotions and the power of embracing our multifaceted selves."
AFRO-CARIBBEAN SERIES
The "Afro-Caribbean Series" is an exploration of Rodez’s Hispanic culture and roots. Heclaims that what he accomplishes in creating these paintings is a sense of voyaging back to Cuba, transforming it, and making it fresh and new, as if never touched by its over half-century of stagnation. The colors used throughout the series are representative of our Hispanic culture and Cuba's colorful stained-glass, as well as it's magnificent architecture from a time long ago. But they are not just beautiful paintings; they serve to acknowledge and bring awareness of the more serious conditions in his parents’ homeland and those of others throughout the Caribbean and the Americas.
ELEMENTS & VALUES SERIES
In the "Elements and Values Series" Rodez approaches the canvas without any notion of what he is about to create. Both the canvas and mind are blank at the very moment of conception. However, as the paint permeates the canvas, it will begin to speak and tell him what it wants to be. There is total abandonment of any preconceived subject matter, color, image, dimension, or proportion. He describes it as looking for images in clouds. He works in that same manner discovering what wants to manifest and come to him through the vortex that is the canvas. A prism of colors then begins to appear in a magical state of hypnotism as he works in this series. He also describes it as being in Zen and one with the canvas.
DREAM SERIES
The source for the “Dream Series” is nightmares. As surrealists in the past, Rodez believes that nightmares contain the secret compartments of our subconscious. This is where fears, struggles, and desires come to hide or, shall we say, manifest. Information that can be hidden from our subconscious mind. But once captured on canvas, it is open to be discovered and brought forth to the conscious mind, and therefore allowing us to understand the puzzle presented before us, and to unravel the code and figure out what the significance of the dream is. Many of these pieces are mounted on a sort of dreamcatcher with ropes attached to both the canvas and the surrounding wooden frame made up of railroad ties. Note that many of the pieces in this series have been iterating across Spain in exhibits titled "Síntomas del Sueño" (Dream Symptoms).
