Diego Rodriguez-Warner
Diego Rodriguez-Warner was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1986 and moved to Denver, Colorado in 1990. He holds fine arts degrees from Hampshire College and the Rhode Island School of Design, and he has studied under the Cuban Minister of Fine Arts, Lesbia Dumois, in Havana. At RISD, he was a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. His work has been shown around the US, in Cuba, and in Germany.
Trained as a printmaker in Havana, Cuba and at the Rhode Island School of Design, Rodriguez-Warner has developed a manner of painting that is informed by woodblock printing and characterized by tromp l’oeil, collage, and art historical references. He enhances the tromp l’oeil by carving into and staining the plywood panels on which he works. Painted shadows and subtly carved ones confuse the eye. This sensation—that of the possibility of depth—is amplified by the layering of forms, figures, and patterns that twist around, melt into, and overlap one another. Some of these familiar fragments might be cribbed from ukiyo-e master Yoshitoshi, or master painters such as Henri Matisse and George Grosz, while others elude identification even as simple shapes.
