Cooke Latham Gallery – Francisco Rodriguez: The Silence that Lives in Houses

Francisco Rodriguez has created a now familiar world through his painting, a menacing urban hinterland of lone figures and flaming horizons. In his new exhibition The Silence that Lives in Houses Rodriguez reveals another side to this narrative. The series is comprised of quiet interiors: a classroom, a sitting room, a bedroom, an abandoned art class. The exhibition’s title is taken from a 1947 painting by Henri Matisse and perfectly describes the palpable silence that pervades the paintings.

The interiors depict ‘safe’ spaces from Rodriguez’s teenage years and are painted from memory without recourse to reference materials. Rather than trying to paint something allegedly universal, he engages the viewer with the authenticity of his own specific experience. This is not a perfectly rendered reality but instead the recollections of adolescence as informed by his current influences and interests.