Rodrigo Tafur was born in Arequipa in 1990. Twenty-four years later he graduated from the Faculty de Arte, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Lima, Peru. He has won some acclaim from his peers being awarded the Premio Adolfo Winternitz 2013 - Facultad de Arte PUCP and Primer Puesto Academico (promoción 2014) Premio Adolfo Winternitz. Facultad de Arte PUCP. He did not come by these awards easily because at the start he struggled as many do at his age with the distractions youth offers. He rebelled somewhat against the structured life of the student until he realized through his own frustration that he must work to achieve his goals and that unless he applied himself he would not succeed as an artist. He credits his father with much of this success as it was his father who instilled in him the importance of hard work in order to succeed
Rodrigo is a self-claimed workaholic and the evidence is all about his studio. He doesn't work on a single painting until it is completed but works on up to six at a time. This is dictated not only by his work ethic, but by the process he has chosen to realize his works. Each painting starts from a base, or a ground colour and is then built up through countless applications of very thin layers of pigment to create the illusion of depth. On the large red paintings ghostly figures emerge from and blend into the background. They are faceless, and nameless, evoking mythological hero's. These are nameless hero's of Joseph Campbell's world view, a view that has also influenced the works of Rodrigo Tafur.