Javier Arizabalo

About this artist

Biography

Javier started learning drawing and painting from a noticeably young age, later receiving formal art education and training at the art academy of his Basque hometown Irun and the University of Bilbao.
For a long time, Javier used his creative skills as a graphic designer, while also making forays into photography and computer graphics. Overlapping with the later years of his design career, he taught at the art academy of Irun. Since 2006, his calling as a painter has been his main occupa- tion.
“Javier is very focused on technique, as he believes that strong technique is crucial to conveying the theme and message of a painting. As his technique has matured—his brushstrokes are amaz- ingly fine and his treatment of light is a delight!—the visual eloquence of his paintings has deep- ened and the earlier symbolism in his work has retreated to a more modest role,” Kiki Kim, Chief Curator of the IBEX Collection observes.
Javier mainly paints in oil on canvas in a style that ranges from realism to hyperrealism, sometimes with a touch of surrealism and often exuding serenity, harmony, balance—all the good stuff that seems missing from our modern lives but is so present in his very Spanish lifestyle.
“Any object, action, or experimentation involves infinite actors and factors that interact in an open-ended journey to recombine the DNA of our reality… What a richness it is to contemplate, beyond words or shapes, that infinite process of becoming,” Javier once told art blogger Silvia.
In this worldview, a treatise, a protest banner, or a Guernica do not change the world, but our myriad everyday actions, words, and even thoughts do. Artists, with their insanity (“to counterbal- ance society’s excess sanity”) and sensibility offer us views on this reality and the realities possible.
A kind and generous person, Javier makes his models and photographers very comfortable, so we can expect more works to keep flowing from his studio.