Have you discovered an artist whose paintings are actually sculptures? Born in Miami in 1985, Enrique Machado creates sculptural seascapes by applying silicone directly onto wooden panels with a caulking gun, forming raised lines that define the movement of water. He then pours colored resin between these lines, creating luminous surfaces rich in texture, depth, and the illusion of constantly flowing water.
Miami, 1985
A Caulk Gun for a Brush
Machado studied at Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High and New World School of the Arts, graduating in 2004, before receiving a sculpture scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. His early work explored energy through illuminated ice sculptures. After teaching at Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, he discovered colored silicone caulking at Home Depot in 2007, inspiring his distinctive Silicone Art technique.
“"I saw that silicone came in black, grey, white, and clear, and thought of it like colors in an acrylic tube, only a much bigger one".”
Enrique Machado, In conversation with the critic Carlos Suarez, 2014
Silicone and Resin
Always Wet, Never Dry
Machado uses a caulking gun as his brush, applying silicone directly onto panels to create three-dimensional line drawings. He then pours colored resin between the raised lines, producing vibrant, glossy surfaces with a fluid, luminous finish.
Clouds (2021) is a beach in three bands: a sky of poured resin, a sea of black silicone lines, and a shore of white silicone foam.
Enrique Machado
Clouds
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic and Oil on Wood, 24 × 24 × 1 in
$5,000
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
The sky is resin, still as glass and as glossy as wet paint. The clouds are silicone laid over it in soft white ridges.
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
Each black line is one pass of the gun. "With the silicone dripping method I am able to create lines that are skinny, wide, long, and short."
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
The surf is silicone again, shaped in the hand: "using the silicone as a ball of clay, molding it carefully with my hands and fingers to make indentations within the material."
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
Seen from the side, the foam stands well clear of the panel. "I love how the texture creates its own shadows and reflects its own light," he says.
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
The Miami Ocean
The Wave
Inspired by Miami’s coastal lifestyle, Machado’s silicone and resin paintings offer stylized contemporary interpretations of water, ocean waves, and their dynamic movement.
A wave painting shown at Aldo Castillo Gallery in a Miami art fair in 2014: blue resin swells outlined in black, and white silicone spray flung from the crests.
That year the critic Carlos Suarez was reminded of , the colour woodblock print of about 1830 to 1832.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Vampire Wave curls in red, white and blue, its foam breaking into a white spiral at the heart of the curl.
Enrique Machado
Vampire Wave
Resin, Silicone, Acrylic, Oil, Wood, 48 × 48 × 2 in
Price on request
In Blue Beach (2021) the wave has already broken: white silicone surf spills over bands of blue.
Enrique Machado
Blue Beach
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic and Oil on Wood, 24 × 24 in
$5,000
“Machado explores forces greater than ourselves, capturing the inevitable collision of power and chaos. Like the ocean, these forces shift between violence and tranquility, reflecting the unpredictable nature of existence.”
Enrique Machado, In conversation with the critic Carlos Suarez, 2014
Flow, Crash, Waterfall
Chaos and Control
"My work explores forces greater than ourselves—an overwhelming sense of inevitability that descends with immense power, creating chaos in its wake. Like the ocean, this power can be violent one moment and calm the next".
Blue Chaos (2017) runs eight feet: rows of breaking peaks, each a fan of blue strings capped with white foam.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Up close every peak is drawn in parallel strings that rise together, then break into foam, the way a swell lifts and spills.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Flow lays the peaks over the whole field in pastel colours, crest over crest, each one edged in foam.
Enrique Machado
Flow
2017, Silicone, Resin, Acrylic on Wood, 73 × 73 × 2 in
$25,000
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
The foam is the drawing's last line: a scalloped edge of white silicone piped along the top of every crest.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Carlos Suarez saw the Crash series as "bright monochrome fields of rainbow splashes contrasted by beached-bone accumulations of silicone ribbons." In Green Crash the field is green.
Enrique Machado
Green Crash
Silicone, Resin, Acrylic and Oil on Wood, 48 × 48 × 2 in
Price on request
In the Waterfall works the strings stop breaking and fall: White Waterfall is a single curtain of white.
Enrique Machado
White Waterfall
Resin, Silicone and Oils on Wood, 74 × 54 × 2 in
Price on request
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
Oil Spills, Purple Rain, Moonlight Reflections
Night Water
Through series such as Oil Spills, Purple Rain, and Moonlight Reflections, Machado explores life, love, obsession, and human struggle.
God made it rain, the devil made it hail (2021): a band of coloured strings dripping white into a black field.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Every drip is silicone left to hang where it fell, white on black, like hail caught in the air.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
In Spill #2 (2021) the colour is gone. Black lines on black resin rise and fall in ranks of low waves that only the light can find.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Turned to the light, the black becomes relief: every ridge throws its own small shadow.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Moonlight (2024) catches a silver shimmer across the dark.
About this image
Aldo Castillo Gallery.
Purple Rain (2021) lets violet strings fall through the night.
Enrique Machado
Purple Rain
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic, Oil on Wood, 62 × 74 × 2 in
$25,000
Spill Over (2022) turns the night around: black silicone pouring over a field of white.
Enrique Machado
Spill Over
2022, Silicone, Resin, Acrylic on Wood, 74 × 62 × 2 in
$25,000
Color Drip, 2021 onward
Hidden in Plain Sight
Over time, he writes, the water became something else, "an abstract language shaped by my obsession with stock charts and trading patterns."
Color Drip #3 (2023) belongs to the newest series: bands of resin colour, each edged in black, rising and falling across the panel.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Follow a single band. "What may appear as dripping waves or colorful flows is often a repetition of specific stock formations, like the reverse head and shoulders pattern painted over and over, hidden in plain sight."
Traders read that pattern as a low, a lower low, and a low again before the price turns up.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
Icecream Drip (2021) draws the same bands into long vertical runs.
About this image
Courtesy of the artist.
In Color Drip II (2022) the bands tighten into quick, close zigzags.
Enrique Machado
Color Drip II
2022, Silicone, Resin and Acrylic on Wood, 74 × 62 × 2 in
$22,000
Piece of Mind (2021) turns the strings on their side into long, overlapping currents.
Enrique Machado
Piece of Mind
2021, Silicon, Resin, Acrylic, Oil on Wood, 73 × 49 × 2 in
$18,000
“"Ultimately, my art is a visual manifestation of pattern recognition, where market logic meets abstract fluidity, and Intense focus becomes form.”
Enrique Machado, Artist statement
Works from the gallery
Available Works
Collect
Available by Enrique Machado
Enrique Machado
Clouds
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic and Oil on Wood, 24 × 24 × 1 in
$5,000
Enrique Machado
Blue Beach
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic and Oil on Wood, 24 × 24 in
$5,000
Enrique Machado
Purple Rain
2021, Resin, Silicone, Acrylic, Oil on Wood, 62 × 74 × 2 in
$25,000
Enrique Machado
Moonlight
2024, Resin and Silicone on Wood, 84 × 60 × 2 in
$24,500
Enrique Machado
Color Drip II
2022, Silicone, Resin and Acrylic on Wood, 74 × 62 × 2 in
$22,000
Enrique Machado
Piece of Mind
2021, Silicon, Resin, Acrylic, Oil on Wood, 73 × 49 × 2 in
$18,000
Enrique Machado
Spill Over
2022, Silicone, Resin, Acrylic on Wood, 74 × 62 × 2 in
$25,000
Enrique Machado
Flow
2017, Silicone, Resin, Acrylic on Wood, 73 × 73 × 2 in
$25,000
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