Meet Roberto Pedroso

We recently connected with Roberto Pedroso and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Roberto, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I come from a big, loud family. My grandma had 8 daughters and about 30 grandkids. In spite of this large number of people, she always made you feel taken care of, always heard. She was a strong woman who always sprung back quickly when facing a setback, and she had many. She taught me to always keep moving and look for a solution nobody had seen.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I have spent 40 year being an advertising creative director, always trying to look for creative solutions for clients in many different sizes, shapes and even countries. Being a 1960’s child, the mid-century esthetics is engrained in my soul. So, after pleasing so many clients, I decided to let my creative being out in full force and just please myself. I began a self-taught journey to learn how master the techniques of acrylic painting and bring to life my love for color, shapes, composition and rhythm, with one foot of today’s trends and another in the mid-century sleek design lines. The feeling of being creative just for yourself and getting lost in a painting is invigorating, inspiring. But I quickly found out that people also loved my work, so my new career as a painter was launched. I still approach every piece trying to create a colorful rhythmic flow but now I am also aiming to make people’s homes happy. That’s my goal: to bring a good, positive feeling to your mind when you see my painting on your wall.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think my willingness to try new things and not getting easily discouraged are my best qualities. I like to start from a place where you know that you will be wrong sometimes, you will not find the solution you’re looking for. But that is simply part of the process. When I work on a painting and half way through it I am not liking it, I study why not. What didn’t work: the colors, the flow, the rhythm? I see it as a case study to learn from. You need to be aware that sometimes it’s hard to translate what you have in your head to reality. And that’s ok. That’s the good, fun part of work: figuring out how to do that. Be curious, try different things. But put in the work: don’t give up easily, don’t be happy with the first thing you do.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

I think that knowing your strengths is a good starting point for exploration. I personally have never wanted to do just one thing in life, the one that I am good at. I have tried playing musical instruments, writing a book and finally, when I started painting, I found a new passion. It took me years painting on and off and a lot of visits to museums, research, chats with other artists to find the style I am working on right now, but I always knew it was within me, it just took the courage to try something new and the awareness that some failures are part of the process, to find the style I am very happy with now. But I am always evolving it, experimenting, searching.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robosoart/