Samuel Rodriguez’s art is a mixture of portrait painting, illustration, and graffiti. He differentiates between two types of portrait paintings, which he calls “Topographical Portraiture” and “Type Faces.” While his Topographical Portraits are made by stylizing a portrait with topographical lines and shapes, in a similar manner to those found through images on geographic maps; his Type Faces incorporate typography and portraiture.
Rodriguez’s style is very much informed by his background as a graffiti artist. For a number of years, he was self-taught through the graffiti scene, until he 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 relayed in an interview with 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.”
His unique blend of street art and portraiture painting hasn’t gone unnoticed. With more than 40k followers on Instagram, he has garnered both online and offline attention. Based out of San José, California, his work is shown in public art spaces, museums, companies, and galleries, as well as published in editorial publications.
Here are some highlights from his Instagram page.
