All people are artists. Your medium may not be paint but we are creative creatures and when we do not have the space, time or materials to be creative we become destructive. Without creativity all things die; it is an aspect of life that a lot of the world tries  to tell us is not important but every time I come back to the canvas and paint I remember what I’m supposed to be doing. While it is always a great feeling when a piece of my art sells, it is by no means what drives me to paint in the first place. People used to be able to express their artistry in their daily lives and with their communities; today it has been shoved into a corner, onto a wall, classified and is accessible to few.

There are few places in communities for new, emerging or just for fun artists to share their work. Every time a city provides some space to artists they are recognizing that paint, colour and imagination gives back, feeds and nourishes communities in ways that other things cannot. While not every artist has the desire to share their work, most of us do. I feel a sense of purpose realized when my work is out there somewhere for the public to see.

Rene Rodriguez is one of these artists, expressing the desire to have his art available to the public so that when he paints at home he knows it is not for nothing, not for just the doing, but to share his expression of, for, to and with the world. Rene Rodriguez was born in Mexico City. He started painting at 12 years of age. In school he was always drawing and took as many art classes and workshops as possible. He later went on to study graphic design at the University of the Valley of Mexico. In Mexico City Rene worked in theatre, painting sets and making costume designs for the rock musical Starlight Express by Andrew Lloyd Webber. When he first moved to Canada he  lived in Montreal. Looking for a beautiful place to live for him and his wife, who was pregnant at the time, he moved him and his family to the Okanagan, based simply on some  pictures he had seen  of the valley. He came for the landscape, the mountains and the lakes and the colours. Rene has lived in the Okanagan for over five years and works as a waiter. He likes to paint in the early mornings when the world is quiet. He paints on canvas and uses frames that he finds at second hand stores.

Please come down to The Golo Art Project and enjoy Rene’s work for as much as he may paint for himself, he also paints for you.

Join our Face book group or e-mail goloartproject@live.comand receive updates on Life Drawing classes, Games Night, Stitch & Bitch and more to come in the Project Room. Or join me here at oook.ca for my weekly post “writings from the wall” as I introduce a Golo artist each week and intertwine their unhighwaylike path through their community and beyond.