“Rock Romano: This is That” Opens at Redbud Arts Center June 6
Before I lost him in 2024, my beautiful Donnie spent 38 years as an engineering project manager for petrochemical clients. Projects he oversaw during his career such as expanding refineries and constructing chemical plants involved enormous budgets. Donnie was highly respected and very successful. I loved it when I discovered things about the much younger, hell-raising Donnie, a bad-ass who loved Houston’s music scene.
He saw Hendrix perform in 1968. “Virginia, I’ll never forget the night Hendrix played at the Music Hall. He set his guitar on fire, and we were on acid. Damn!”
Recalling the night Doug Kershaw was too waisted to stay on stage, Donnie said “and I know who stole his violin.”
One evening in 2013, the musician Rock Romano “sold-out” 41 paintings at his exhibition at D. M. Allison Art Gallery. When I returned from the show I asked Donnie if he was acquainted with Romano. “Dr. Rockit,” Donnie said grinning.
How cool that Gus Kopriva and his staff at Redbud roped in Rock Romano (Dr. Rockit) for a show. Romano opens the exhibition “Rock Romano: This is That” in the East Gallery at Redbud Arts Center on June 6. The opening reception is June 6, 2026 6-9pm. The show runs through July 25, 2026.
Here’s what Redbud Gallery wants you to know about Romano and his art:
ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m a musician and an artist. My awareness of this started when I was about 10 years old. I have not been able to do much about it ever since.
I paint swirls and dots, circles and images that overlap and grow out of each other, contrasting colors that repeat and harmonize like flowers growing wild or cool improvised notes in a piece of music.
I often try to put more than one painting on the same canvas. This creates shifts in time, and exciting spaces for all those dots, circles and images.
Finding an iconography is hard, maybe impossible. So I go into my head and surrender. I gesture with my hand. I make marks, trying to capture energy, structure, motion and feeling. I hope to tease your brain a little and make you laugh once in a while.
I love to put strange scenes and recognizable things in my work. I invite you to create anything you want out of what you see. You will always be right!
BIOGRAPHY
Born on Valentine’s Day in 1945, Rock Romano grew up in Houston’s Near North Side in a large Italian Catholic family surrounded by music, faith, and storytelling.
He always had a band and a sketchbook in his hand. By kindergarten at Holy Name School, he had fallen in love with drawing, and by age 13, he was already playing paid gigs on guitar with his first rock band. At University of St. Thomas, where he studied art history, his work caught the attention of patrons Dominique and John de Menil, who helped launch his early art career with a 1969 exhibition at Houston’s Louisiana Gallery while his band, The Fun and Games, was signed to MCA Records.
Over the next five decades, Romano became a cornerstone of the Houston music scene as a guitarist, producer, engineer, and founder of Dr. Rockit and the Sisters of Mercy, working with artists ranging from Lyle Lovett to Trudy Lynn while his legendary Red Shack Recording Studio in the Heights helped shape generations of Texas musicians. Though music dominated much of the ’70s and ’80s, he never stopped painting, evolving from watercolor and gouache into large, expressive acrylic works filled with movement, emotion, and vivid color.
In 2013, he sold out a 41-painting exhibition at D.M. Allison Art Gallery, and in 2026, the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art presented a major retrospective of his work. Now in his 80s, Romano still paints almost daily and continues to perform and record, his art and music remaining as kinetic, soulful, and unmistakably Houston as ever.
Image: Rock Romano, “Tumbling Weedeaters,” 2026, Acrylic on Panel, 48 x 38
www.redbudartscenter.com
Redbud Arts Center
303 E. 11th Street
Houston, Texas 77008
713-854-4246
