Hello and thank you for visiting my website.

I was born in San Jose, Costa Rica. The first 9 years of my life were lived in what was then called Villa Colon, a small town nested at the foot of the mountains near San Jose.

From there my family moved to the California desert town of 29 Palms, gateway to the Joshua Tree National Park. It was there that my interest in art really began.

After graduating from 29 Palms High School I joined the US Marine Corps (USMC) Reserve and began attending the California State Polytechnic University at Pomona as an Aerospace Engineering major.

Being curious about life and other places, I decided to go France and study there for a year. I did so as an exchange student at the "Institut National des Sciences Appliquees de Lyon". I got artistically confident there, specially after exhibiting some of my work at the annual "Salon Regain" in Lyon.

I returned to California, got out of the USMC, and continued my engineering studies. I got involved with solar powered race cars through a group called CapSET, and also developed an interest for airplane design. All along though, my interest in art continued.

After graduating from Cal Poly I moved to Montreal, Quebec. I spent a winter there... I returned to California, and began teaching high school Science, Foreign Language, and Math at the Pomona Unified School District and the University of Southern Califonia. I also went back to an old hobby of mine, wood working.

In 1994 I began taking night courses in stain glass and ceramics at Coastline Community College in Costa Mesa, California. I also went back to engineering in late 1995 after being hired by the Douglas Aircraft Company (now part of Boeing) as a Aerospace/Simulation Engineer. In early 2000, I moved to Torino (Turin), Italy, worked at Alenia Aerospazio, and lived in Rivoli, about 10 miles west of Turin. In June 2001, I moved to Toulouse, France, and started working for Airbus, my current employer.

I continue painting and experimenting with art and am presently involved in various projects. One is a series of 100 small oil pastel and watercolor drawings which I've come to call "100 Places and Moments". Most of these are impressionistic in style. I've completed more than 100 so far in California, Arizona, Mexico, Costa Rica, France, Italy, and Norway. Another is a series of 32 in. x 50 in. oil paintings of a very spontaneous nature. I've completed 50 studies for these and have started on one of the paintings themselves (see On the Easel...). I'm also going back in time and working on the enlargement and adaption of certain 10 year old drawings into canvas (see the first and second untitled works in the Paintings Gallery).

Most recently, I've begun experimenting with using 3-D elements and motion in my paintings. One of these experiments, "Chez les Navaho", is a 3-D landscape which hangs horizontally from the ceiling at about chest level, and near a corner. To picture it, imagine a transparent pyramid with it's tip attached to the ceiling, its base the painting, and able to swing and spin. This painting uses not only motion but also light and shadows as elements since when properly lit 3-D butte shaped strings on the painting cast shadows on the walls comprising the corner. A "shadow dance" then insues on two walls as the painting is swung and spun. Click here to view

My latest idea is a series of works to be done on heavy cardboard or wood. I got this idea during my last visit to Costa Rica (Dec 1999-Jan 2000) after seeing the ash piles left behind after my mom and brother burn their trash (and after I heard that our bamboo grove nearly got burned to the ground). I plan to lay the boards on the ground and to put a heavy coat of varnish on them. Then I plan to suspend branches of bamboo over them and to sprinkle ashes on top. Hopefully some of the ashes will get past the bamboo and some will be filtered by it, leaving a sort of photo-negative image of the bamboo on the board. On a recent visit to Carrara, Italy, I collected some marble dust which I also plan to use along with some colored sand which I got from a "mandala". Who knows how this will turn out or when I will do it...given the few spare moments I now have.

I hope you'll enjoy or have enjoyed my work. Feel free to write me an e-mail message (josearaya@hotmail.com) if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions to make.

...and by the way, that's me on the picture biting my monkey's nose...

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