Artist finds inspiration from his surroundings. His mural is distinctly Merced

For Merced artist Eddie Rodriguez, inspiration comes from his surroundings and the observations he makes during the course of his daily life. Selected as one of multiple artists to participate in the Merced Gateway and Mural Project in 2022, Rodriguez, 42, said his mural located on the wall of the R Street Highway 99 underpass, incorporated elements of Merced including a Merced landmarks, a flower and a bird regularly seen throughout the region.

For a mural he painted on the side of the McNamara Youth Center in McNamara Park, Rodriguez said the inspiration for the piece came from watching one of his friends riding a moped with his daughter while the two of them played in the yard.

“Unfortunately I did not grow up with my father, Rodriguez said. “My father was a muralist but he stopped before I was born. That’s something huge in my life I’ve had to try to deal with — not growing up with my dad.”

Upon seeing his friend having a great relationship with his daughter, Rodriguez said that was something he wants to celebrate and highlight at a place where people would be visiting with their children.

“Also to encourage fathers being in their children’s lives,” he said.

Originally from the Bay Area, Rodriguez said he lived in Atwater for a short time prior to moving to the Merced area in 2019. Even though he did not get to see his father creating murals, growing up he saw panels throughout the house that his father had painted. His mother would even incorporate drawings as a form of entertainment.

While doing a project in high school Rodriguez learned how to create murals using a grid system. After graduating, Rodriguez said he studied at Academy of Art University in San Francisco and even spent time in Dubai and Abu Dhabi while in the United Arab Emirates where he said he trained university staff on how to teach drawing.

Another part of Merced Rodriguez has incorporated into his work throughout the years is Bear Creek. Rodriguez said he has dine so for residents who live on the south side of the city, farther away from the creek. It was his way of reminding people that a beautiful place such as the creek is also theirs.

“I’m enamored with Bear Creek I love it, I painted it so many times,” Rodriguez said.

After moving to the Central Valley, Rodriguez said he sought out various artists while trying to learn as many different methods of creating murals as possible. The mural Rodriguez created on R Street is the largest he has created by himself and was done with the use of brush and spray paint.

His McNamara park mural is the first mural he painted entirely with spray paint.

Rodriguez said that at one point in his life while living in Los Angeles, he became ill for many years and moved to the Central Valley to be closer to family who had moved from the Bay Area after it became too expensive to live there.

Rodriguez said that before moving to the region, he had never thought about the connection between art and the Central Valley.

“As soon as I started meeting artists here, one there’s so many and two there’s incredible world class talent here,” said Rodriguez.

Due to the lack of galleries in the Central Valley, Rodriguez said he began painting murals and learning skills from fellow artists in the region. He then set out to visit as many galleries as he could from the Bay Area to New York while trying to help as many local artists as he could get their work into galleries.

Rodriguez said he is also involved with the Merced Arts and Culture Advisory Commission. To help address complaints of outside artists taking on large projects in the city and the lack of funding for arts in the city budget, he and other artists pushed for a system to be put in place that would give some advantages to local artists.

“I think it’s really growing the amount of murals we have here,” said Rodriguez. “My hope is that we’ll branch out into other arts like sculptures and audio visual stuff as well.”

After studying traditional ways of painting and having done photorealism work, Rodriguez said he brings those elements and that background into his mural work. The health problems he experienced also forced him to to learn other ways of painting as he was not able to spend hundred of hours in a studio working on photorealistic pieces.

The health problems he experienced also forced him to to learn other ways of painting as he was not able to spend hundred of hours in a studio working on photorealistic pieces.

“When I started getting better I had to abandon my voice as an artist because I used to do photorealism,” he said. “I could work on a piece for 400 hours in a studio, and now I didn’t have the stamina —i f I was lucky I might get two hours in month. So I had to figure out other ways to paint. That period of trying to figure out my voice, got me addicted to versatility.”

Picking up new materials and figuring it out became the entertaining part which he takes into his work on various murals by using different materials and and using different approaches as well as things he has learned from other artists.

“I’m like an art junkie,” said Rodriguez. “A big part of my day is looking at other artists.”

Rodriguez said he feels that he, as well as other artists, are conduits by taking in the world and filtering their interpretation of what is happening.

“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m saying until a little bit after the art (is) created,” said Rodriguez. “It’s almost like my subconscious knew before my conscious knew.”

One underlying message that he tries to incorporate throughout his art is that nearly anything is possible.

“Push the boundaries of possibility,” Rodriguez said. “Even if you’re working in an office job or whatever, there’s things you may desire to do or want to do. Go for it.”

After his experience with deaths in his family, dealing with his own illness and other traumas of growing up, Rodriguez said he is often using art as a way to spend time with ideas and sooth difficult emotions. Rodriguez said that for example, even though the viewer may not know he is painting about something such as death, he hopes that on some level that feeling permeates.

“When the viewer sees it, they’ll sense there’s something deeper there,” he said.