Alfredo M. Arreguin

Although born in Mexico, Arreguín developed as an artist and consolidated his professional career in Seattle, Washington, where he has lived almost continuously since 1956. His early childhood and adolescence, as well as later experiences that led to his maturity as a genuinely American painter, in the real, hemispheric sense of this term, endow him with a unique perspective on life and the world. Many of the intricate and exuberant elements that stamp a distinctive character on his works are generated by his memories of his country of birth. Mexico’s alternately vibrant and ascetic culture––its exquisite ceramics, textiles, and wood handicrafts; its tumultuous and glorious history, from the cosmogonies and sacred rites of the Tarascan (Purhépecha), Mayan, Aztec, and Olmec civilizations to the wars of conquest and independence; its verdant and torrid nature and landscape––eventually overlaps and blends, dreamlike, with his experiences in this serene and beautiful corner we call the Pacific Northwest of the United States. But his creative vision goes beyond these influences and derives inspiration from a multiplicity of sources that include, as we shall see, some art forms from Korea and Japan, where he served in the U.S. military.

The staggering volume and quality of his production over the last three decades have already ensured for Arreguín a distinguishing place in the history of North American art. . . .   

—Lauro Flores in Alfredo Arreguín: Patterns of Dreams and Nature. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2002, pp. 2, 5.

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