His Giant Canvases Flap From Street Corners

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Samples of Al Esquerra’s work.
Samples of Al Esquerra’s work.

He paints in oil, watercolor and acrylic paints, makes photographs and works in metal. Sometimes he goes multi-media, creating abstracts based on his fertile imagination, but also hones his representational painting skills by taking his gear into the hills overlooking the ocean. There is hardly a visual art form in which Al Esquerra has not expressed his creativity.

Since 2009, his efforts have not gone unnoticed, admired by thousands of visitors. Esquerra has five times won a commission to paint a banner in the city’s annual competition.

1 esquerra and beac#76D590His 2015 entry pays homage to Laguna’s tradition of pleinair painting. He depicts a woman painting the much heralded coastal view near Heisler Park. Shaded by an umbrella, she puts brush to canvas bearing the joyful expression of someone engrossed in something she loves.

“The painting is based on a real woman whom I had observed painting in the area and I could not help but notice how happy and content she seemed,” explained Esquerra. “I took roughly 15 photographs of her from every angle before choosing the profile view.”

Traditionally, each year’s winning banners are displayed at Main Beach during the summer before being dispersed to other city locations.

Esquerra’s sixth banner shows the unique and often painted rock formation at Treasure Island. Selected in a separate jurying process, it measures only 10 feet in length and is one of the works currently displayed in City Hall’s Council Chambers.

He’s also won commissions during the city’s annual palette competition, also displayed on light standards outdoors and earned an honorable mention during the “Art That’s Small at City Hall” competition in 2013.

Every year, the city invites artists from throughout the county to submit banner designs rendered on small boards, and an Arts Commission subcommittee selects four entries. They are submitted unsigned and selected for their merit, said Commission member Suzi Chauvel. The winners are given a month to transform their paintings into 16-foot-long banners, a process that has its own inherent challenges.

“I am lucky to live in a three-story house because I can hang the banner from the top floor

to review the first stages and take photos of it,” Esquerra said. “Then I bring it into my (second floor) studio for adjustments to get shapes, colors and proportions right. I can never paint the whole thing in the studio since I have to gradually roll the canvass out,” he explains. To weather-proof the canvass, he gives it four coats of dull and glossy varnish.

“My thinking is that it is a great way for artists to advertise their talents and also influence city culture in some way,” he said.

Advertising is not far from his consciousness since he and his wife Darlene own Strata Media, an Irvine ad agency.

Chauvel calls the banner program among the most popular among artists and the public. “People are oohing and aahing over the banners in the summer. They tell the city’s story and are unique since they are all hand-made,” she said.

Chauvel, along with Suzanne Mellor and Carmen Salazar, form the banner subcommittee. “By now, the city has an amazing collection of banners and replenishes it every year,” she said.

One of 10 siblings who moved to the United States from Mexico at age 5, Esquerra, now 62, came to art while hitchhiking through Europe and North Africa after leaving Chapman University where he defrayed part of his tuition with scholarships and playing baseball. “After I came back, I got serious about art and attended classes in drawing, painting and computer graphics at Orange Coast College,” he recalled, adding that the life skills he acquired as an athlete, including team work, leadership and creative thinking translated seamlessly into his art career.

Versed in the technological aspects of making art, Esquerra credits his concentration on representational art, especially of nature and the human body, to a resurgent religious faith. “I looked at nature and saw what God created. I also learned that I was not creating but recreating,” he said.

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