Alfredo Arreguín

Alfredo Arreguín (January 30, 1935 – April 24, 2023) was a Mexican-American painter, known for pattern-based paintings focused on animals, plants, and the natural world, as well as featuring Mexican cultural heritage.

For sixty years, he worked out of his adopted home of Seattle, Washington, producing his signature style of pattern paintings that sourced his Mexican culture and his experience in the Pacific Northwest.

He also took Arreguín along for a business trip into a small village, Las Canoas, that was filled with plants, trees, insects, and birds.

Gallagher's husband, the author Raymond Carver, would later describe Arreguín as a painter who worked "like a locomotive," a reference to the long days he spent painting.

[8] Carver's wife, poet Tess Gallagher, wrote the foreword for professor Lauro Flores' book on Arreguín.

[9] In 1992, Arreguín designed the poster marking the 20th anniversary of Seattle's El Centro de la Raza, a cultural center created by student and community activism in 1972.

[10] One of El Centro's founders, Roberto Maestas, described Arreguín's impact on regional art, saying “because of his political statements and his artistic talent, Alfredo has helped put Washington on the map.

His style relied on small brush strokes that built up to cover large canvases, which meant that an individual painting could take weeks or months.

[citation needed] Arreguín was commissioned by the Washington State Supreme Court to paint a portrait of Chief Justice Steven González.

One of Arreguín's paintings ("Las Garzas") hangs in the office of University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce.

“Las Garzas” depicts herons flying across a starry mosaic sky and wading through seemingly bioluminescent water.

Cauce noted that “Alfredo Arreguín filled the world with beauty,” and that “he made my spirit soar like the breaching orcas in his paintings.”[16] He was represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle, Washington.