Francisco Morales is a Chicano illustrator, designer and muralist who takes the visual language of advertising and turns it around. His work looks at how brands speak to Latino shoppers, and what happens when the people being sold to pick up the same bright, confident vocabulary and use it to tell their own story.
These migrations have created new generations of latines with one foot in two worlds.
He trained at Oregon State University and works across murals, design and illustration. Portland's music scene knows his hand: he art-directed the Doug Fir Lounge's 15th-anniversary campaign and has made work with Y La Bamba, Orquestra Pacifico Tropical and the DJs of Noche Libre. In 2022 he drew the label for the 35th Jubelale, Deschutes Brewery's winter release, inspired by his first snow in Oregon.
In 2020 he painted Paradise for Portland Street Art Alliance's Central Eastside Mural District, a piece about the exchange of goods and culture between the US and Latino communities. In 2021 he led a wall at the Vernonia Mural Festival.
At Hopscotch his wall is headed “No Tienes Dinero”: a crowded, color-blocked stage of figures in an ad-poster register, with a boxer, a bull and a horseman. Walls Within, curated with Portland Street Art Alliance, at Hopscotch Portland.
