Untitled (red figure), 2019

Elizabeth Ibarra’s (b. 1986, Guadalajara, Mexico) creative explorations take form in painting, works on paper, mixed media sculptures and assemblages of tree branches she calls “Sunday Findings.” Her pictorial representations of the figure are recognizably human but they also bare a strange, unidentifiable alien nature. Her “creatures,” as she refers to them could represent extraterrestrial beings, the experience of being a foreigner with an outside perspective or simply the feeling loneliness. Along with Ibarra’s sense of wonder and haunting comes an absolute honesty: “for some reason I’m fucked” she scrawls on a self-portrait, and “good-bye will probably forget you” on another.

Ibarra lives in Los Angeles. Although her work bares resembles to modern masters such as Joan Miro, Louise Bourgeois and J. M. W. Turner, Ibarra did not undergo a formal education. Instead, her stylistic development was independent and inspired by the connectivity and simplicity of images and cosmology.