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A View from the Studio | Ignacio Escobar

"Art is a language, spoken by the universe”

This is how Ignacio Escobar describes the force that drives his work in his Long Beach, California studio, a creative practice deeply rooted in memory, heritage, and healing.

From Madrid to Long Beach

Escobar was born in Madrid, Spain, where his Colombian artist father studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. After returning to Bogota, his father took his own life, and the family moved to Vancouver, Canada. There, Ignacio attended Emily Carr University of Art and Design while working in the art department of the motion picture industry for over two decades. Surrounded by extraordinary artists, his creativity flourished inside this intensely creative discipline.

In 2014, he moved to Los Angeles. By 2021, after years of tinkering with his own art and design and completing the design and construction of a Spanish hacienda in Nicaragua, Escobar found himself with no creative outlet. He built his Long Beach studio and became a full-time artist. "It has become an obsession and a necessity,making art is sustenance" he says. "I feel I have landed where I was always meant to be."

The Ritual of Resin

Escobar's day begins around 7:00 AM, but his process actually starts the night before when he mixes his pigments and resin. This material requires approximately twelve hours to cure to the point where he can hand-form it in a narrow window of workability that demands precise timing.

"I hand form the resin in its soft, moldable curing phase. This is still within its exothermic reaction. It's creating heat within itself. If you try and do too much at once, it collapses." He typically works on two or three pieces simultaneously, forming them in stages. The rest of his day is filled with sanding, polishing, mounting, building pour trays and forms, photography, and social media. "The behind the scenes work is endless."

But for Escobar, the creative process extends far beyond these technical tasks. His daily jogging routine serves as meditation, a space where he dreams up ideas and solves problems undisturbed. "Sometimes these ideas turn into experiments, sitting in the studio unnoticed for months, percolating until they strike me."

An Unforgiving Medium

When he begins a piece, Escobar doesn't always have an exact plan. "I am not relaxed, my nervous system is elevated, a familiar place for me. The resin is unforgiving. Once it touches itself, it is stuck. It will most often tear if you try and re-do it."

The entire exercise, he says, feels ritualistic, like releasing something. Once finished, he sits with each piece until its story begins to reveal itself. "It starts to make sense to me. I name the piece. It can take weeks, but getting there is very therapeutic. I feel great joy in the end."

Music plays constantly in his studio, a companion in the solitary work, with song lyrics often opening doors to ideas and titles for new works.

Heritage and Color

Inspired by his father's paintings, Escobar is exploring the depths of his creativity as a visual artist. His Colombian heritage erupts in color and form as he experiences this language and embraces its lessons. "Inspiration is free. It is everywhere. A song, the sea, a love, the sky. Combine that with one's turbulence, entanglements, consciousness and the ethereal, and you have art."

Transcending Through Form

"Transcending time, emotions and trauma, I capture the intangible, the ethereal, consciousness and the elements of infinity," Escobar reflects. "Light, refraction, shadows, reflections, form and flow. A healing ritual materialized three-dimensionally through my hands with resins and pigments."

In his work, he captures nature's elegance and struggles, balancing in the vastness of color. Lost, he says, in this wonderful world of art.

As for his studio space itself, Escobar laughs: "My studio is way too small! My art has taken over the house. I do not recommend it from an interior design perspective. It makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Fortunately my wife is a good sport."

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