ARTIST STATEMENT

Originally from Los Angeles, RAD is an artist and educator based in West Harlem, New York. He’s been teaching art to children since he graduated with a major in Fine Arts and a minor in Art Education from The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Teaching has been a source of inspiration, for both RAD and his students. 

RAD creates paintings, collages, murals, print, digital and mixed-media pieces which aims to stay true to the spirit and vitality of one’s youth. It’s an ethos that is exemplified in his character Forever Young, a walking LEGO minifigure wearing a simple blue suit and briefcase enjoying a dripping pink popsicle. 

Based on his love of LEGO and the soap operas his mother watched in order to learn English, having immigrated from Cuba, RAD began to develop a narrative of his own, his minifigures living in a fictitious town of Raddington Falls. 

As children play with toys, their action figures and dolls engage in a dialogue as the child attempts to make sense of the values of our culture, whether from television, films, internet or their family. It's the earliest form of storytelling, which, continues when children draw. Narratives form with each line put down on paper. It’s these concepts that RAD has learned as an art educator, which continue to inform his art. 

Some of his work taps into the political, cynical side of adulthood, which attempts to encroach at the edges of one’s psyche. It’s these dualities that give his work tension and dimensionality. 

©RAD