Hugo Crosthwaite

 Hugo Crosthwaite (b. 1971, Tijuana) grew up just south of the U.S.-Mexico border in Rosarito, Baja California—a place where the surreal often feels ordinary, and the line between reality and myth is blurred. He earned his BA in Applied Arts and Sciences from San Diego State University in 1997, but his true education began on the streets of border towns, in comic books, and among crumbling facades and handwritten signage. Crosthwaite is a draftsman at heart, wielding pencil and charcoal with exacting detail and unrelenting spontaneity. His drawings unfold line by line, improvisationally—stories emerge as the image does.

Working primarily in black and white, Crosthwaite’s densely layered compositions fuse portraiture with the visual language of comic books, urban grit, and timeless myth. His figures—raw, expressive, heroic—navigate the chaos of Tijuana’s shifting architecture and the psychological borderlands between nations, identities, and dreams. Fear and hope, pain and joy coexist in these works, as the artist elevates everyday people into icons of survival and struggle in contemporary life