Paola
IBARRA

Born in Mexico City, the well-known capital megalopolis of Mexico, Paola grew up in a traditional Mexican family, where she was the youngest of 4 siblings. At the age of 8 Paola discovers a book “how to draw the human body” and she begins to draw by learning on her own in a self-taught way. She developed a particular taste for drawing faces, and especially eyes.

Whenever Paola could she would visit her Aunt Paquita, who she painted in oils, and the fact of observing her for long hours, and talking with her, was both inspiring. and motivation that encouraged Paola to follow her example.

Jorge, Paola's father loved to draw caricatures for her, and he was also for her, very early on, a model and a source of inspiration, throughout her childhood in Lázaro Cárdenas near the Pacific Ocean and the magnificent beaches of Michoacan .

From the age of 15 Paola left the family cocoon to settle in Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacan. In college Paola, who continued to perfect her technique for drawing faces, became famous with the caricatures of her friends that she quickly sketched between two lessons, during recess.

Morelia, is a city with a long and rich cultural and academic tradition. It is here that the San Nicolas de Hidalgo University, one of the first on the American continent, was established in 1540. Paola takes advantage of the richness of this environment where culture and the arts are omnipresent and enrolls in painting and charcoal drawing courses at the Maison de la Culture, which also allows her to meet and rub shoulders with many artists from 'diverse and varied backgrounds. It is moreover through these encounters that she befriends the painter Hugo Ayvar who will be a source of motivation and inspiration for her. She also meets the famous painter Alfredo Zalce with whom she will take private lessons.

Paola has always been interested in the life and work of great painters, whatever their period, they are a source of inspiration to her, and she spends hours in the library immersed in these art books, she does not miss the opportunity to visit an exhibition, wherever she is. Through these experiences, first as a child, then as a teenager, her interest, her passion, her love for painting continue to grow.

After high school, and not yet knowing that painting will be her main activity, Paola, who is also a brilliant science student, studies chemical engineering at the University of San Nicolas de Hidalgo and becomes an engineer in this specialty, without giving up her artist's work.

Once an adult, Paola wants to continue to perfect her technique and she takes lessons with an artist she admires in the person of Saskia Hoyos, and it is with her that she really learns new techniques in more depth, and that 'she perfects herself. It is also at this moment that Paola understands that painting is her true passion, and she decides to devote herself entirely to it (at least when her three young children give her the leisure!).

Today the main techniques Paola works are oil, watercolor, and acrylic.

Paola's unique style combines in her inspiration references to the great masters that she particularly loves such as Picasso, Matisse, with an explosion of bright colors reminiscent of Mexico and the work of artists from Michoacan. It is this original association, which makes the richness and depth of the portraits that Paola offers us, drawing on her intuition, her imagination, and according to her inspiration of the present moment.

Mexican above all, but also French by adoption, Paola wishes to share her passion, her paintings, with the greatest number, in Rennes where she lives, in Brittany, in France, in Mexico, and wherever there are lovers of painting.

Today Paola Ibarra's studio is in Rotheneuf (St Malo - France), where she finds inspiration facing the sea. She also paints and exhibits where she has another studio in Rennes.