The impetus behind Paul Botello’s art career was the influence of family, in particular an admiration for his older brother David Botello, who was already a professional artist at the time Paul was growing up. Assisting his brother and Wayne Alaniz Healy (see entries on these artists), who as the “East Los Streetscapers” were producing numerous murals in the East Los Angeles area, Paul gained mural experience that would serve him well later in his career. He was educated at California State University, Los Angeles, where he earned a B.A. in fine arts in 1985 and an M.F.A. in 1996. He also studied at the East Los Angeles Occupational Center, where he was awarded a certificate of achievement in industrial drafting and computer-aided design in 1989. In the same year Botello launched a teaching career and has taught high school and college-level art since that time. Simultaneously he pursued his mural activities, producing more than a dozen murals in the Los Angeles area as well as Global Chessboard, executed in Berlin in 1994. This in turn led to projects in which art was integrated into architectural designs, notably for two new Metro stations in Los Angeles.

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