Orderly on weekends at the Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB) and artist every day in his home studio. This is the secret of painter, engraver, and comic book artist -and former filmmaker- Iban Sarabia, who has also been a part-time employee at the healthcare center since 2011.
"I studied audiovisual communication many years ago and worked for a few years in the world of cinema," Sarabia confesses in an interview published on the HUB website. "After the 2010 crisis, I had the opportunity to start working at the hospital on weekends and I felt it was the right time.
From then on, he decided he would work at the hospital on weekends and dedicate the rest of the days to setting up his studio, "which at that time was for photography and video," he explains by way of detailing the reasons that led him to make this radical professional change.
From Hollywood to Bellvitge
Camera assistant in several films, he worked with Mario Casas and even Robert de Niro and Sigourney Weaver, among other film stars. Affected by the stress, precariousness, and inherent instability of the film world, he also grew tired of screens and for about ten years has focused only on painting, Sarabia continues in the aforementioned interview, which is part of the section called 'The B-side', referring to the hobbies, curiosities, or unknown anecdotes of the healthcare center's professionals.
Now, Sarabia has transformed his apartment into a painting studio, where from Monday to Friday he lets his art flow, whether in the form of watercolors, oil portraits, or comic strips. "One of the most important lessons I took from photography and cinema is color, something I believe is at the base of my paintings," he recalls.
"I learned a lot about color by taking photographs, combining whites, blacks, all kinds of colors, and when I started painting it was a subject that quite obsessed me," acknowledges the orderly of the hospital corridors who paints away from the gaze of patients.
