In His Dark Baroque Oil Paintings, Randy Ortiz Blends Strange Characters with Dramatic Shadows

At Arts to Hearts Project, our mission is to celebrate artists not just the ones with gallery representation or academic credentials, but the ones doing something genuinely alive. The ones who built their practice entirely on their own terms, who make work that comes from a real and honest place, and who connect with people in the way that only something true can.

Our Best of the Art World editorial was created for exactly those artists the ones who kept their heads down and did the work while everyone else was busy having opinions about how art should be made and who gets to make it. And today we are so genuinely excited to bring you one of them.

Randy Ortiz known widely under his creative identity Damn the Design is a self-taught illustrator and painter whose work sits in a space that is genuinely difficult to categorise and completely impossible to forget.

For over twelve years, Randy has been quietly building one of the most visually distinctive and emotionally honest practices in contemporary illustration and fine art self-taught, on his own terms, with a punk rock irreverence toward the art world that somehow makes everything he does feel more alive rather than less. He did not go to art school.

He did not study under a master. He spent three years in college, three more in an office, realised neither was built for him, and walked away. What he built instead through twelve years of trial and error and absolute commitment to the work is extraordinary.

His visual language draws from the Baroque. Rich, dark palettes. Dramatic contrast. Compositions that carry weight before you have fully registered what you are looking at. But what lives inside that framework is entirely and unmistakably his. Strange characters. Animals. Religious imagery. Figures that exist somewhere between threatening and tender.

Compositions built from a genuine and ongoing reckoning with identity, self-doubt, and the particular isolation of feeling like you never quite belong to the world around you. It is personal without being indulgent, dark without being impenetrable, and occasionally in a way that catches you off guard.

He works across graphite, charcoal, oil paint, and digital media. His graphite and charcoal work carries an extraordinary tonal precision the kind of detail that rewards the viewer who slows down and looks closely. His oil paintings, a growing and increasingly significant part of his practice, are built on canvas, wood panel, masonite, and aluminium composite panel, each surface chosen with intention.

His commercial work has reached some of the most recognised properties in entertainment. His personal work is something else entirely — quieter, stranger, built from a place of genuine emotional honesty that his audience recognises immediately and responds to deeply.

He has shown in galleries around the world. He has built a following that is genuinely his people who found their way to his work not through institutional channels but through the particular recognition that happens when something speaks to what you have been carrying privately and never seen reflected back at you quite so honestly.

Let’s get to know Randy through our conversation with him and discover a practice built entirely on honesty, irreverence, and the absolute refusal to be anything other than completely himself.

Q1, Randy, let’s start at the beginning, when did drawing first become something you felt you needed to do?

In terms of a holistic encapsulation of my entire being, drawing was something I simply gravitate towards without even thinking about it and I wasn’t really good at anything else. In terms of a career, spending 3 years in college to then work 3 more years in an office environment made me realize I was not cut out for that world.

I truly hate working a ‘real’ job, and the alternative of making a living under my own terms through something I loved doing was much more appealing. Even if it meant financial hardship for the rest of my life. Luckily, that hardship only lasted a few years.

Q2. You once described your art as a way of “purging negativity.” Has creating still function as a form of emotional release for you?

Most definitely. Most of my personal work is about identity and the internal struggles with one’s self. My own self loathing and how I perceive myself as less than is probably my biggest struggle internally. While it hasn’t fully gone away, I still like to create these works based on that insecurity and share it with the world. When people tell me they identify with it, it makes me feel less isolated. Or something.

Q3. Your work brings together unusual characters, animals, religious references, and symbolic imagery. What draws you to these elements?

With my paintings, I’m very inspired by the Baroque period of fine art. Something about a rich, dark palette that really works for me.

A lot of paintings from this period have very intense imagery, and that’s how I’d like to portray my own work as well. I love having the entirety of the piece revolve around one character whether it be a dog or pretty woman or a ghoulish skull man. Each of these are reflections of myself, I guess.

Q4. Do your darker subjects come from personal fears and experiences, or are you more interested in the visual and imaginative possibilities they offer?

As stated earlier, a lot of it has to do with identity and my own experiences with that. But sometimes I just want to paint cool looking things. Or simple, pretty things. I think it’s sometimes a good idea to not put pressure on myself to constantly make something personal.

Q5. Two Friends and a Dog Having a Fun Time Together in Heaven pairs darker imagery with a playful title. What inspired you to approach the idea of heaven through humour?

I think I was just trying to strike a balance between an image that felt heavy with something more light and absurd. The contrast added a layer that I feel the work needed.

I sometimes try not to take my art too seriously. Using a long and convoluted title just makes me giggle sometimes.

Q6. Can You Hear Me? became one of the works associated with your practice and was later recreated in oil. What made you want to revisit the image in another medium?

Honestly, it was because I was beginning to get a lot more comfortable and confident with oil painting that I wondered what it would look like if I painted it. Turns out the graphite version is superior, in my opinion. The imagery is better served as a stark, tonal grayscale.

Q7. When creating licensed or pop-culture artwork, how do you balance your own visual style with the original subject and a client’s expectations?

It really helps to mostly accept work that fits my visual vibe. As much as it would make me laugh to work on something absurd like Shrek or Home Improvement or something, it just wouldn’t click. Once that’s established, it becomes a balancing act of not just staying true to the property, but also appeasing the client and their needs as I stated earlier.

You do this by going back and forth with rough drafts and endless edits until you find something. This usually results in art that is far from what you had hoped. But this is where it crosses the line over into straight up commercial work. It’s really not my favourite but it’s a small compromise to keep funding my more meaningful, personal work.

Q8. How has being self-taught influenced your artistic development, both in terms of challenges and creative freedom?

I’d say both. Had I started learning in an atelier, I probably would’ve got to where I am much sooner. On the other hand!

Teaching myself through trial and error was part of the fun. It helped me find a style that works for me, and not have it be ingrained in my head academically.

Q9. How do you define success today, beyond recognition or financial stability?

Success is being able to support myself financially while also creating work that is meaningful to me. Also being able to connect with others through my art and share that meaning so we don’t feel alone in this world feels pretty great. Conveying emotion that can make an audience feel something is a small success in itself.

Q10. Are you becoming more interested in painting and larger-scale fine art, or do you see illustration remaining equally important to your practice?

It’ll bounce back and forth, I don’t really have a solid plan or goal in mind. What I do know is that painting is a fairly new practice for me, which means there is much to learn. I feel I’ve exhausted that in terms of my illustration work.

Q11. Looking back at your earlier drawings compared with the work you create today, what change in yourself do you notice most?

I feel there isn’t that much change. I think the themes are a similar vibe throughout my work, but possibly it’s matured a bit more. It’s also possible that working with color now has opened up new opportunities to explore creatively.

Q12. What advice would you give to young artists who are still finding their voice and feel pressured to fit into the expectations of the art world?

Honestly, just keep your head down and don’t stop trying to perfect your craft.

The art world is full of the worst people you can imagine and they’ll come and go just like their opinions on how you should navigate and integrate yourself into the art world.

When you put the work in (and maybe a dash of punk rock irreverence towards the art scene in general), people will most definitely see that. And even if that’s just a small proportion of collectors, those will be your people, and that support will feel real and motivating.

As our conversation with Randy drew to a close, one thing stayed with us more than anything else. He said that success, for him, is being able to support himself financially while creating work that is meaningful and being able to connect with others through that work so no one feels alone in this world.

That is it. No grand ambitions about institutional recognition or critical validation or a particular place in art history. Just the work, and the connection it makes possible.

That sounds simple. And in the contemporary art world, it is actually quite radical. Because the art world, as Randy himself will tell you with characteristic directness is full of people with very strong opinions about how artists should position themselves, what they should make, and who they should be making it for.

And most of those opinions have very little to do with the work itself. Randy has spent his career largely ignoring all of that. Keeping his head down. Perfecting his craft. Letting the work speak and trusting that the people it was meant to find would find it.

There is something the art world could learn from that. From an artist who never asked for permission, never followed the prescribed path, never softened his visual language to make it more palatable and built something that resonates not because it was positioned correctly but because it was made honestly.

That kind of authenticity does not go out of fashion. It does not depend on what is trending or who is showing where. It simply endures. Because it is true.

For those who collect work that carries that kind of genuine feeling work that was made by someone who was fully, completely, unapologetically themselves while making it Randy’s paintings and illustrations are exactly that. The kind that stays with you. The kind that makes you feel something you were not expecting to feel.

Follow Randy Ortiz through the links below and see his work for yourself. We think you will feel something you were not expecting to feel.