Richard Alvarez was raised in the Bronx and as a teenager became a part of New York's vibrant downtown art scene, first as a fashion stylist, then as a painter. Using glass and a layering technique he developed himself, his work references iconography from the Santeria and Catholic religions which surrounded him as a child.

He explores the intersection of the human and the divine through disparate styles of Renaissance painting, the edge of the '80s Manhattan underground, and the kitsch aesthetic of Latino culture. His current work, while retaining a connection to these themes, expresses a more embodied and ecstatic state, mysteriously attuned to and perhaps overcome by the frenzied patterns of nature.