Francisco Marroquín is a Mexican painter whose practice is grounded in academic drawing and the tradition of realism, understood not as an end in itself but as a point of departure for a personal exploration of perception, color, and visual experience. He trained under the guidance of master Alejandro Creel, where he developed technical mastery of drawing, chiaroscuro, and hatching, as well as a rigorous approach to the study of figure and composition.
His work focuses on figurative painting and portraiture, approaching representation as a space of tension between observation and interpretation. Through an ongoing investigation of color and pictorial atmosphere, he seeks to transform the everyday into an introspective experience, where technical fidelity coexists with a subjective and poetic dimension.
He has participated in the group exhibitions Senderos Bifurcados and Resonancias Latentes at Galería Covarrubias, as well as Raíces y Horizontes at JCarrasco Gallery. He is part of the Babel project, based in San Miguel de Allende, which promotes dialogue among contemporary artistic practices. He has also held solo exhibitions at Galería Ricardo Garibay and at the Presidential Palace of Tulancingo de Bravo, Capital Cultural of the State of Hidalgo.
Marroquín conceives painting as a continuous field of study and a tool for visual reflection. His work dialogues with the classical tradition of realism while exploring contemporary possibilities of the pictorial language, positioning the image as a space of contemplation and pause within the accelerated experience of looking.
Project Statement
I work from realism as a technical and conceptual foundation, understanding representation as a means to explore perception, memory, and visual experience. My practice is grounded in academic drawing and the study of chiaroscuro, but it is oriented toward an investigation of color as a sensitive agent capable of transforming the image and generating states of contemplation.
I am interested in the tension between observation and interpretation: how light, tone, and atmosphere alter the reading of the everyday and turn it into an ambiguous, introspective space. Through portraiture and figurative painting, I seek to construct images in which technical fidelity coexists with a subjective dimension, where painting does not merely describe but suggests and holds the viewer’s gaze.
My process combines traditional methods of drawing and painting with an intuitive exploration of color and composition. I understand painting as a continuous field of study, where technique is not an end in itself but a tool for thinking about the image and its poetic possibilities.
I aspire to develop a pictorial language that dialogues with the tradition of realism without being confined by it, positioning painting as a space for visual and sensory reflection, where the viewer can experience a pause before the image and reconsider their relationship with the represented reality.
