Meet Your Maker 004: Valentina Rodrigues
Introducing the next addition to our Meet Your Maker series, Valentina Rodrigues. Whilst also working full time as a metalworker, Valentina creates paintings from her home studio, forming pigments from crushed up sea shells and mixing salt water concentrations with alcohol to react with inks.
1. What does your workspace look like at the moment?
Right now my workspace feels like stepping into another dimension, almost like Alice in Wonderland, but I don’t fall so deep. It’s just a corner of my living room, but once you step inside, you’re in a sacred space, a protected world of possibilities. The walls are covered with codes and little signs, waterfalls are painted across the floor, and shells and old brushes are scattered everywhere. It’s a place where parallel worlds seem to exist at once with the ordinary and the infinite.
2. Nature and our relationship to it seems to be a big inspiration for you. Could you tell us more about how you physically utilise nature in your practice?
As a child I painted outdoors, and that gave me this early awareness of how light shifts, how shadows move, how perception itself changes with the sky. I would paint at sunrise or sunset and feel my body shifting alongside the sun and moon. It was always a ritual. I still carry that with me. I collect shells, stones, branches, and press them into wet paint, like seals of memory. I make pigments from soil, clay, ash, or plants, mixing them into my own paints like potions. Rain, storms, waves, birds, these are the first sounds I want to hear when I work, not human words. Sometimes language feels too abstract. But the rhythm of drops, the exact number of them falling, it feels precise, intimate, alive. When I paint, my body moves like it’s dancing, or climbing, or swimming. It’s as if all those years spent by the ocean and mountains are stored in my body, and when I paint, they come back through me, the strength, the vulnerability, the hope of new possibilities.
3. When observing nature, what elements tend to pull you in and shape your creative process? Textures, tones, form, movement?
Water, always. I get lost in the way a drop falls and expands into rings. It feels so simple but it breaks me open. It’s emotional, like I see my whole existence inside one drop. I spent countless hours as a child in the Atlantic Ocean, watching waves loop endlessly. Sometimes I’d let them swallow me, just to feel that rush, the sand, the fish, the bubbles, the sunlight breaking through the water. It’s terrifying and beautiful at once. Those textures… the rolling wave, the silence underwater, the sudden light above, all of that comes back in my painting. I try to translate those movements into brushstrokes, those moments of both chaos and clarity into colour.
4. Do you have a uniform when you’re at the workshop or at the studio? Does what you’re currently creating influence what you wear?
I don’t have a strict uniform, but I always dress for movement. Comfy, almost like I’m going camping or hiking. Clothes with big pockets where I can carry small treasures. I want to feel ready to climb, to run, to swim, to sit by fire. What I create always influences how I dress. Right now my work is about movement, so I wear clothes that let me move freely, let my body respond fully to the brushstrokes.
5. New Cross is a long way from the Atlantic coastline of Portugal, is there a nostalgic influence from your childhood in these inspirations, or how are you able to find this influence in your current environment?
As a child, I could spend whole days at the beach. Counting waves, watching tides rise, letting the ocean wash over me. Walking along the sand I’d meet strangers, or look for treasures. Floating on the surface, I’d stare at the sky and ask myself questions about life. I remember an old man once telling me that fire and the ocean were the most dangerous forces in the world. I couldn’t understand it. How could something I loved so much be dangerous? Every day after, when I went into the water, I’d remind myself: I won’t be afraid. That shaped me deeply. It taught me how words can influence us, but also how we have the power to transform what they mean. In London I feel that same kind of stimulation, but from people instead of waves. On the bus, in the streets, thousands of reactions, thousands of emotions. Light and dark all at once. That constant tension influences my work too. When something feels hard, unfamiliar, or frightening, I imagine those waves again. If you resist, you drown. But if you surrender, you find the beauty in being carried, in letting go. That’s the same energy I try to bring into my life and my work.
6. How do the materials you choose in your art help you translate energy and movement in your work?
I use black ink a lot. For me it’s infinite, it contains all colours, all possibilities. It feels heavy and dark, but I use it as a place to push toward light, to create hope in the brushstrokes. I also work with shells, stones, salt, branches. They bring their own energy into the work, the memory of where they come from. They hold histories that blend into the canvas, expanding the piece beyond me.
7. Does music play a role in energising your creative process? If so, who or what?
Absolutely. Music is essential. It’s with me from morning to night. It keeps me moving, focused, alive. In a city like London, where everything is in constant motion, music gives me hope inside that chaos. I listen to everything, but Burial is a big inspiration for me right now. His sound is fragile and dark at the same time, layered with so much depth. There’s tension and vulnerability in his music that I want to echo in painting with balancing heavy textures with delicate gestures, creating light inside shadow. When I listen, I feel embraced by imperfection. It makes me feel safe enough to transform, to let anything become possible.
1. What does your workspace look like at the moment?
Right now my workspace feels like stepping into another dimension, almost like Alice in Wonderland, but I don’t fall so deep. It’s just a corner of my living room, but once you step inside, you’re in a sacred space, a protected world of possibilities. The walls are covered with codes and little signs, waterfalls are painted across the floor, and shells and old brushes are scattered everywhere. It’s a place where parallel worlds seem to exist at once with the ordinary and the infinite.
2. Nature and our relationship to it seems to be a big inspiration for you. Could you tell us more about how you physically utilise nature in your practice?As a child I painted outdoors, and that gave me this early awareness of how light shifts, how shadows move, how perception itself changes with the sky. I would paint at sunrise or sunset and feel my body shifting alongside the sun and moon. It was always a ritual. I still carry that with me. I collect shells, stones, branches, and press them into wet paint, like seals of memory. I make pigments from soil, clay, ash, or plants, mixing them into my own paints like potions. Rain, storms, waves, birds, these are the first sounds I want to hear when I work, not human words. Sometimes language feels too abstract. But the rhythm of drops, the exact number of them falling, it feels precise, intimate, alive. When I paint, my body moves like it’s dancing, or climbing, or swimming. It’s as if all those years spent by the ocean and mountains are stored in my body, and when I paint, they come back through me, the strength, the vulnerability, the hope of new possibilities.
3. When observing nature, what elements tend to pull you in and shape your creative process? Textures, tones, form, movement?Water, always. I get lost in the way a drop falls and expands into rings. It feels so simple but it breaks me open. It’s emotional, like I see my whole existence inside one drop. I spent countless hours as a child in the Atlantic Ocean, watching waves loop endlessly. Sometimes I’d let them swallow me, just to feel that rush, the sand, the fish, the bubbles, the sunlight breaking through the water. It’s terrifying and beautiful at once. Those textures… the rolling wave, the silence underwater, the sudden light above, all of that comes back in my painting. I try to translate those movements into brushstrokes, those moments of both chaos and clarity into colour.
4. Do you have a uniform when you’re at the workshop or at the studio? Does what you’re currently creating influence what you wear? I don’t have a strict uniform, but I always dress for movement. Comfy, almost like I’m going camping or hiking. Clothes with big pockets where I can carry small treasures. I want to feel ready to climb, to run, to swim, to sit by fire. What I create always influences how I dress. Right now my work is about movement, so I wear clothes that let me move freely, let my body respond fully to the brushstrokes.
5. New Cross is a long way from the Atlantic coastline of Portugal, is there a nostalgic influence from your childhood in these inspirations, or how are you able to find this influence in your current environment? As a child, I could spend whole days at the beach. Counting waves, watching tides rise, letting the ocean wash over me. Walking along the sand I’d meet strangers, or look for treasures. Floating on the surface, I’d stare at the sky and ask myself questions about life. I remember an old man once telling me that fire and the ocean were the most dangerous forces in the world. I couldn’t understand it. How could something I loved so much be dangerous? Every day after, when I went into the water, I’d remind myself: I won’t be afraid. That shaped me deeply. It taught me how words can influence us, but also how we have the power to transform what they mean. In London I feel that same kind of stimulation, but from people instead of waves. On the bus, in the streets, thousands of reactions, thousands of emotions. Light and dark all at once. That constant tension influences my work too. When something feels hard, unfamiliar, or frightening, I imagine those waves again. If you resist, you drown. But if you surrender, you find the beauty in being carried, in letting go. That’s the same energy I try to bring into my life and my work.
6. How do the materials you choose in your art help you translate energy and movement in your work? I use black ink a lot. For me it’s infinite, it contains all colours, all possibilities. It feels heavy and dark, but I use it as a place to push toward light, to create hope in the brushstrokes. I also work with shells, stones, salt, branches. They bring their own energy into the work, the memory of where they come from. They hold histories that blend into the canvas, expanding the piece beyond me.
7. Does music play a role in energising your creative process? If so, who or what?Absolutely. Music is essential. It’s with me from morning to night. It keeps me moving, focused, alive. In a city like London, where everything is in constant motion, music gives me hope inside that chaos. I listen to everything, but Burial is a big inspiration for me right now. His sound is fragile and dark at the same time, layered with so much depth. There’s tension and vulnerability in his music that I want to echo in painting with balancing heavy textures with delicate gestures, creating light inside shadow. When I listen, I feel embraced by imperfection. It makes me feel safe enough to transform, to let anything become possible.
