“Two Windows, Two Mountains” 2021 – Oil paint, spray medium, and raw pigment on canvas – 61 x 67 x 2 in. (154.94 x 170.18 x 5.08 cm)
LISTEN VIA THE PLAYER BELOW courtesy of Acast (the episode is also available on the Apple podcast app, Spotify, and YouTube).
Estefanía Vélez Rodríguez (b. 1985, Mayagüez, PR) is a Puerto Rican artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. As a dual-tongued individual, she utilizes the symbolic language of painting as a bridge between many cultures and spaces. Her paintings formally address questions between abstraction, non-representation, simplification, symbol, and painting as a language with ambiguous structural limitations. Her landscapes meander and distort physical spaces like mazes meant to be misleading.
Utilizing chemical reactions within a painting, Estefanía experiments with raw pigments, spray materials, oil mediums, and acrylic polymers. Her painting language ruptures visual spaces, opening the viewer’s receptivity to fleeting spaces, times, and emotional presence.
In this interview, she talks in-depth about the seven paintings she has on display as part of the group show Past Tense/Future Perfect at NYC’s Marc Straus Gallery, which will be up through August 8.
Below are images of the works discussed in this episode, along with their source photographs:
Source photo for “Two Windows, Two Mountains” (see the top of this page to view the painting)
“Psychic Light” 2024 – Handmade oil paint, regular oil paint on canvas – 48 x 48 x 2 in. (121.92 x 121.92 x 5.08 cm)
Source photo 1 for “Psychic Light”
Source photo 2 for “Psychic Light”
“Crypt/Los Muertos” 2024 – Handmade Oil paint, Oil paint, on canvas – 18⅞ x 15¾ x ¾ in. (48.00 x 40.00 x 2.00 cm)
Source photo for “Crypt/Los Muertos”
“Trouble in the Landscape” 2024 – Handmade oil paint on canvas – 36 x 24 x 1½ in. (91.44 x 60.96 x 3.81 cm)
Source photo for “Trouble in the Landscape”
“Small Rocks Tagged Glitter and Sand” 2022 – Liquid pigment dispersions, chalk, glitter, ceramic spheres, acrylic mediums on canvas – 16 x 12 x 1½ in. (40.64 x 30.48 x 3.81 cm)
“Small Rocks Tagged Quinacridone gold, with blue” 2023 – 2025 – mixed media on linen – 14 x 11 in. (35.56 x 27.94 cm)
“Small Rocks Tagged (Tinted Red, Pink)” 2021 – Liquid pigment dispersions, chalk, acrylic mediums on canvas -16 x 12 x 1½ in. (40.64 x 30.48 x 3.81 cm)
Source photo for “Small Rocks” series
