Distillation of Research

The Works of Roger Flores

Known primarily for his civic involvement as a member of the San Antonio city council from 2003-2007, and vice president of his family’s restaurant enterprise, Roger is a lifelong resident of San Antonio and has been painting since the age of 10.  He grew up surrounded by art, those of his parents’ and those they collected. Roger was inspired to start painting after finding a cache’ of his father’s work, and remembers the spark of excitement from the creation of his own first works. “ My parents continuously encouraged me to paint. In times where parents were pushing their children to become doctors and lawyers mine were telling me I was an artist.” 

Roger is largely self-taught and has within the last year been able to focus his time and attention on painting. Roger has used a variety of mixed media and applied those media using many different techniques.  Currently he works with oils and acrylics. “I’ve experimented with many media and techniques to try and create something different, but I have always been pulled back to the workability of oil paint.” Roger still studies the work of artists Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Hans Arp and Joan Miro among others. He has sought an authentic style, which is aesthetically pleasing to the artist and the observer.

“I have always been intrigued by dualities. Humankind can live in dualities as can nature. I enjoy placing chaotic forms over static patterns. I often try to split a painting into two fields or one over the other to represent duality and sometimes symbiosis.”       – Roger Flores

Roger Flores (American, b. 1969)
Distillation of Research
Oil on canvas
Signed l.r.
73 x 60 inches

Exhibited: Paloma Riverwalk Restaurant, Tricentennial Show, Northwest Vista Colleges, March 2018-April 19, 2018.

Note: Painted for the 2018 San Antonio Tricentennial as a representation of what makes San Antonio what it is today.

Roger Flores recalls his undergraduate days studying Food Chemistry saying, “Distilling is taking a liquid or material and reducing it down to its essence to increase the matter’s strength.”

Combustion of thought and experimentation creates knowledge! This composition begins with a baseline of black…what you know. Each great stroke is an experiment. Research is chaotic and must be a far reaching endeavor; sometimes the most outlandish experiments bring about the most significant discoveries. The red dot represents the distilled knowledge; its small size is an intentional contrast to the large size of the painting. The idea can be applied in many facets to help humanity.