The Soul of the Desert Painting

My name is José Galán, I was born in Barcelona (Spain) in 1977. I am a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes acrylic, oil and watercolour paintings, 3D computer graphics and augmented reality. I began painting canvases and graffiti in 1992, and I have been surrounded by artists, professors and paintings since that time. From 1993 to 1998, I attended the Fine Arts and Graphic Design School “Groc” in Barcelona as a painting and ceramics major. In 2006, I earned a DNAP, at the “École supérieure des Beaux Arts de Perpignan” (France) in Fine Arts. In 2007 I earned a master’s degree in 3D Computer Graphics at the Autodesk Training Center of Barcelona. After working on my own projects for a couple of years, I co-created my first startup, Mars’ Toad, in 2009. The aim of this startup company was to develop different and funny games for iPhone and iPad like Captain Glyph, a fast paced action-puzzle-word game. The project that I am working on right now, called Imaginary destinations is a personal metaphor of the 3D virtual worlds, and was devised with the intention of experiencing in different scales, decontextualizing and recontextualizing real and/or unreal elements; to get into the world of the very small or outsize, modifying the conceptual and emotional contexts of the scenes and elements, changing colors, playing with lighting, and adding life to generate positive synergies. Each piece of work combines at least two or three disciplines or techniques, such as acrylic & watercolour painting, 3D computer graphics, augmented reality and digital photography, and is expected to mark the start of promising new research directions for the next pieces of work.