BIO (2026)
 

Nancy Rodrigo (b. 1961 NYC) is a queer artist, therapist, educator, activist, and second-generation native New Yorker of Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, and Dominican ancestry. More recently featured in Hyperallergic for her paintings at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC), Rodrigo has also previously been featured in The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and the BKLYNER, and has exhibited at the Leslie Lohman Museum, Franklin Furnace, La Mama, A.I.R. Gallery, Van der Plas Gallery, Washington Square East Gallery, SOHO20 Gallery, and Semaphore East Gallery, among others.  She is a member of the Feminist Art Project (College Art Association), a three-time exhibitor in the Every Woman Biennial, a past judge for the Queer Art Prize, and active in Brooklyn’s recovery, LGBTQIA+, and arts communities.

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As a queer mother, feminist, AIDS activist, and social worker establishing roots amidst the vivacious art and political scene of the 1980s’ East Village, Rodrigo’s early mentors were Miriam Schapiro, and gallerists Bernice Steinbaum and Annie Heron.  Feminist Paintings, her first solo exhibition at the Washington Square East Gallery (1984), emerged the same year as the birth of her child.  Rodrigo went on to become an activist with Repro Rights and ACT UP, raising her son in Park Slope, Brooklyn’s then burgeoning queer community.  Concurrent with exhibiting throughout the 1980s and 1990s in gallery and alternative art spaces, she developed a social art practice as an arts facilitator for people living with AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's, and a crisis counselor for the NYC Anti-Violence Project. 

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Rodrigo studied etching and engraving at the National Academy School of Fine Arts, and drawing and painting in workshops and collaborations throughout the 80s and 90s with New York Feminist Art Institute. She earned a BS in Fine Arts and Human Service from Empire State College, SUNY.  While pursuing a Master’s degree from Hunter College School of Social Work, CUNY, she had to pause her studies due to autoimmune disease, which eventually rendered her legally disabled.  Nonetheless completing an internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, she pursued additional studies in psycho-oncology, pain and palliative care, end of life support, quality of life, and art therapy, which have continued to drive her creative work across the decades. 

Drawing upon the multitude of these life experiences and studies, she maintains an active daily art practice, and regularly exhibits her work, through drawings, paintings, and occasionally installation, comics, video, and collaborative works.

To follow her art, exhibitions, work with art students, and romps through Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery, find her on Instagram, @brooklynsoul61 and #nancyrodrigoart.