Ultimately, her work investigates the very nature of painting, breaking it down into its essence and investigating questions of the meaning and language of painting itself. Rodriguez builds her compositions from the essential structural components of painting, with frenzied marks and imperfect forms. Totem-like stacks and squares float freely or are anchored by their relationships to one another, bristling with an uneasy balance as if they may all collapse as the viewer studies the painting. These forms are nonrepresentational, but elevating their importance by putting them up on these implied pedestals makes them feel like they may be a stand-in for a figure or place.