Alfredo Rodriguez

from The George G. Matthews Collection of Western Art

Hubert Wackermann

1954 - 0000

Alfredo Rodriguez is one of nine siblings born in Tepic, Mexico, just inland from the west coast of Mexico, between Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta. A Christmas gift from his mother of a watercolor set when he was six years old seems to have set the course of his life. “We were very poor, but my parents used their savings to buy me a set of watercolors one Christmas night when I was six years old,” Rodriquez recalled. Later he took lessons from a local art instructor, Santiago Rosas, and painting quickly became a way for him to help support his family.

School field trips to Indian reservations in Mexico and his love of American Western movies later inspired Alfredo to paint scenes of the American West. “During elementary school in Mexico we used to take field trips to the Mexican Indian reservations, and my admiration toward the natives grew tremendously,” recalls Rodriguez.

When he was still just a teenager, an American art dealer commissioned Alfredo to paint American Indians. “I discovered that some of the Indians I paint, like the Navajos, Hopis and Apaches, have a lot of similarities with the Indians in Mexico— traditions, celebrations, even some clothing. So, it wasn’t difficult for me to make the transition.”

In his early twenties Rodriguez moved to the United States where he settled in Corona, California and has been painting scenes of the American West ever since. “I was determined I was going to be an American and dedicate my life to painting the American West. I went to school to study English and U.S. history the first day I stepped on American land,” says Rodriguez.

He still visits reservations and a variety of other locations throughout the West doing research for his paintings, sometimes investing months of research into a single painting. Many of his paintings illustrate Bobbie Kalman’s textbooks: Nations of the Plains, Nations of the Southwest, Native Homes, Life in a Plains Camp, and The Life of the Navajo.

“I love painting faces—wrinkles on an old man’s face, as well as the soft values of a baby’s skin or a prairie woman. I think a face can tell a story more eloquently than a multiple-figure scene. I love painting characters of the Old West—mountain men, cowboys, native Americans, old prospectors, as well as children, beautiful women in their environment and activities of the life of the late 1800s. I also like to paint relationships between families—an old man telling stories to his grandkids, or a mother reading a book to her children before going to bed.”

“I never imagined having the life I am having now in America, making a living doing something that I enjoy doing,” he says. “Now I paint pictures for a living in the land of my hero, John Wayne. Being a professional artist has not been easy. But I am enjoying the journey.”

NIGHT SOUNDS Oil on Canvas 1998 24 x 36 inches