He began his studies in Fine Arts at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh College of Art, ECA), where he completed his postgraduate degree in 1994.

The art of José Pablo Arriaga could be described as an expressive testimony, a testimony based on his experiences, adventures, and personal interactions with the social and political world, as well as with nature. By revealing provoked emotional states and raising questions resulting from these personal experiences, José Pablo Arriaga invites the viewer to enter into a dialogue and to begin to ask different questions. While no work pretends to offer a simple answer to a political or social phenomenon, his work clearly calls for greater social sensitivity to injustice.