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Lori Escalera

Los Angeles, CA

"Street Art, Murals, painting and more!"
Street Painter with over 25 years of chalking in the streets of the USA, Canada, Mexico, and China. Professional Artist and career designer/advertising Artist for international corporations, institutions, and local businesses.

A native Los Angeleno, Lori centered her artistic life in the suburbs of Southern California. In the early 1990s, Lori took a shift away from commercial art interests towards fine art. She went back to school to finish her art degrees, which fueled her travels abroad to Spain, Italy, and Greece to study the Classics and Antiquities. Her artistic interests are figurative and revolve around the study of the figure. Lori questions the artist's place in the continuum of art history and cultural beliefs (history and myth). Lori is a cross-medium artist, whose primary work is done in oil paint. She exhibits her creativity in wet and dry mediums on paper, canvas, and ceramic tile. Her work takes on an energy and vibrancy that refreshes the spirit and enlivens the imagination.

Escalera’s earliest influences in graphic design were Designer Sal Bass and the modular theories of Artist Wassily Kandinsky. She was exposed to these artists as graphic influences when she served as an intern designing corporate collateral at SDSU under Jerry Elliott. The effect was that she relied heavily on the abstraction of graphic elements and modular composition in her later graphic design work. As a young college student in the 1970’s, Lori was influenced by textile Designer Shirley Eisman. Under Eisman’s tutelage, Lori adopted an alternate color pallet in an earth tone mix (sienna, umber, ochre, black and white), which she employs when working with Acrylic paints.

In 1980 Lori was hired as protégé to Ben Mayer Architect/Interior Designer and studied under Mayer’s influences for three years doing international applied graphic design. In 1981 she started her own graphic design/advertising firm “Graphica by Lori” which in 1986 morphed into “Design Etcetera.” Escalera has had a full career as a corporate graphic designer working with aerospace, advertising, institutional and manufacturing firms.

1995, Lori founded a civic art group "The Culver City A.R.T. Group,” and served as President for four years. She coordinated a variety of public art exhibitions between 1995 and 2000. She is a founding Board of Director for Ballona Creek Renaissance, a 501-c3. From 1994 thru 2004 Escalera instructed hundreds of children and adults her ideas about art history, drawing, painting, cultural arts, in Southern California - via camps, classes, and private lessons. In 1995 she began creating public art murals with community sectors. These murals act as anti-graffiti project examples, strengthen societal bonds, and serve as a youth-at-risk project.

In 1994 Lori began Chalk Art Street Painting. Today, Lori is a recognized “Maestra” Madonnari Artist and in 2008 Lori became one of the world’s top recognized Street Painters in Madonnari style Chalk Painting. Her love of Baroque artwork over the years has developed into reproducing Neo-Baroque and Academic Classism in the street. The influences of a traditional artist’s painting pallet are seen in her chalk street art and in painting. Her large-scale work in street art, set painting, and community murals have influenced her small-scale oil works on stretched canvas. Her painting on canvas is infused with an energy that originates in accomplishing huge artworks in short spans of time.

In 2004 Escalera began pursuing a fine art career. She is primarily a self-taught oil painter influenced by contemporary oil painter associates Michael Steirnagle, Kelly Paige Standard, & F. Scott Hess.

Lori received her Bachelor Arts Degree Cum Laude from SDSU. In addition, she holds art degrees from WLA College and Los Angeles Trade Technical College. She currently resides in North San Diego County, California. Visit her website for more at http://www.thestreetpainter.com
Wescover creator since 2019
Projects Portfolio
Street Art
Culver City, CA
Street Art
Vista, CA

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