Octopus Initiative Artist Diego Rodriguez-Warner
Trained as a printmaker, Diego 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a manner of painting that is informed by woodblock printing and characterized by tromp l’oeil, collage, and art historical references.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.
Rodriguez-Warner was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1986 and moved to Denver, Colorado in 1990. He received his BA in COIN Theory and Fine Arts from Hampshire College and his MA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. 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, and he was a recipient of the Painters & Sculptors Grant from the Joni Mitchell Foundation in 2020. His work has been shown in Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, and Havana.
