Inside the Studio

Natalia Nicole Rodríguez for 'Guarded Wilds'

Natalia Nicole Rodríguez sitting in her studio in front of several red paintings on the wall.

For exhibition Guarded Wilds, Natalia Nicole Rodríguez looked to distill a universal experience: the shifting seasons. "Spring has always been the season I wait for the most," she says. "I always feel more inspired when it arrives; I create with a different kind of joy." That awareness of light, observing the shifts from winter into spring and summer, became the paintings' quiet subject: a study in fleeting beauty and cyclical change, distilled onto color-washed canvases.

Bright green paint in a jar and on test pieces of paper in Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's studio.

The edge of a green painting depicting abstracted florals on a wall covered in smears of paint in Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's studio.

An inspiration image for Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's work showing a field with dozens of yellow flowers.

A Natalia Nicole Rodríguez painting in olive green with abstracted florals.

The silhouetted flowers that dapple these paintings are drawn from photographs Natalia took during her travels. "I found myself becoming really aware of how the light changes in the spring," she recalls, "so during my afternoon walks I found myself taking a lot of photographs of wildflowers and the landscape... not because I wanted to paint them exactly... but because I wanted to hold onto those specific moments."

The silhouettes, drawn from photographs collected along my journeys, become both memory and imprint, translating fleeting encounters with nature into compositions that feel at once delicate and grounded. Like flower petals carried by the wind, the forms drift between presence and disappearance, holding both movement and fragility within them.
Natalia Nicole Rodríguez

What drew her wasn't a particular species of flower, but how they appeared in the landscape, emerging unexpectedly and bringing small bursts of color into places that had felt quiet for months.

A Natalia Nicole Rodríguez painting in off-white depicting abstracted florals.

Several unstretched paintings overlapping on the floor of Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's studio.

An inspiration image of Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's depicting dozens of white flowers in a green patch of leaves.

An inspiration image of Natalia Nicole Rodríguez's depicting white flowers in a deep green thicket of foliage.

In her paintings, that same fragile emergence plays out: petals recede into the background, dissolving and fading before slowly coming back into focus, as if bobbing on water or caught in a breeze.

Part of this work comes from wanting to hold onto spring just a little longer before the next season fully arrives. Through shifting color, softened forms, and layered compositions, I reflect on the quiet emotions that accompany change, where endings and new beginnings can all exist at once.
Natalia Nicole Rodríguez

The result is a body of work that holds impermanence and renewal together, where endings and new beginnings exist all at once.