Courtesy of AJ Escalante ’27
With skill, commitment and precision built on years of passion and discipline, Art and Neuroscience major AJ Escalante ‘27 talks us through his artistic roots, inspirations and aspirations.
Escalante began on a small scale, drawing characters based on comic books and manga in his sketchbooks, modeled off of his father who had done the same when he was growing up. He cited the pandemic as an important period of development, as he began to hone in his technical, illustrative skills and be able to imagine a future with art, perhaps as a comic book artist.
This was until a fateful high school field trip, when he visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York his freshman year. “I got lost in the museum, found myself in Cecily Brown’s exhibition, and was hooked from there. The works were so large, and there was so much going on and so much color, I did not know how to process it, but I knew that this was it, and this is what painting could be, and this is what I wanted to do.” he said. “I never thought about how the boundaries between figures and abstraction could be tested and broken, and how there really are no rules, and that is why I love painting so much, because there are no rules, you can do whatever you want.”
Along with his trip, he largely cites his time at Connecticut College in the many facets of the Art Department as important to his development as an artist and painter. He said that it was the Art Department that brought him to Conn, after being amazed by the Cummings facility at a college tour, and his experience never let up from there — from one-on-one mentorship from professors, particularly Professor McDowell and Professor Barnard, to the community of students in classes and as a part of the Student Advisory Board, that he also participates in. “Through high school, I started drawing a lot more and began taking it more seriously, but I still knew very little about painting. Once I got to Conn, Professor Barnard allowed me to take his Intro to Painting class my freshman year, and that was where everything really started.” he said. “My experience as an art major has been greater than I could have ever imagined. Since my freshman year, I have felt at home in this department and found great connections with my peers. The faculty have been exceptional, pushing me to bring out the best in my work, and I have also found outstanding mentorship in the department.”
Though drawing continues to be a practice he values, he is best known today for his larger works in Oil Paint. He explained, “I primarily work in oil and would say I am a figurative painter; however, I know in my works they can get quite abstract. I often work on larger scales.” he said. “My work draws heavily on my personal and cultural experiences as a way to process them and my world. In a way, painting has become a therapeutic activity for me, allowing me to process both positive and negative events in my life that would otherwise be hard to access in my brain.”
He continued, speaking to a piece he recently finished as an example of his typical work. “I had just recently finished a painting, Figuring It Out, that is about nine feet tall. It was a fascinating process working on something so large; I had to use a ladder, and it became a very physical activity. It was fun.”
