Rafael Escamilla was born in la Libertad, El Salvador.
He received training in the visual arts at the National Center of the Arts (CENAR) and studied architectural drawing at the national University of El Salvador (UES).
In 1980, due to the Salvadoran Civil War, Escamilla sought refuge first in Guatemala and then in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Escamilla appreciated intuitively and quickly internalized new landscapes, colors and indigenous artistic traditions in each place he sojourned. By the mid-1980s, he took up residence Los Angeles, where visual memory remains an important element of his artwork.
Rafael Escamilla is an avid reader and very familiar with the world’s great artistic traditions. He is fluent in current trends in the painterly and the other arts as evidenced in his wide range of work.
