We often encounter nature on a screen before we experience it in real life. A mountain becomes a desktop wallpaper. A forest is discovered through a social media feed. A waterfall is admired in a perfectly edited video before it is ever seen in person. Spanish contemporary artist Santiago Giralda asks a thought-provoking question: What happens when these digital memories begin to shape the way we see the natural world?

Rather than rejecting technology, Giralda embraces it. His monumental paintings transform pixels into paint, creating landscapes that feel at once familiar and dreamlike. They remind us that our relationship with nature today is no longer shaped solely by the places we visit, but also by the countless images we consume every day.

Where Memory Meets the Modern Landscape

Born in Madrid in 1980, Santiago Giralda draws inspiration from the rich history of landscape painting while bringing an unmistakably contemporary perspective to the genre. His work explores how urbanisation and digital culture have transformed the way we perceive nature.

Rather than painting directly from life, Giralda creates imagined environments that blur the boundaries between observation, memory, and imagination. Works such as The Dancer, Eclipse, Secret Garden, Paradise, Onix, Rizosfera, and Cascada reveal lush forests, waterfalls, mountains, and botanical worlds that seem entirely real, yet impossible to place. They invite viewers into landscapes that exist somewhere between reality and memory.

L to R: Secret Garden & Paradise (2021)

From Pixel to Palette: The Creative Process

Santiago Giralda's artistic journey begins not in untouched wilderness, but in the heart of the city. Armed with a camera, he photographs urban environments, observing how buildings, roads, and modern infrastructure quietly reshape the natural landscape. These photographs become the foundation of his creative process.

Back in his Madrid studio, the work shifts into the digital realm. Giralda enlarges his photographs on a computer before layering them with images, textures, and visual fragments sourced online. Personal memories merge with collective visual culture, creating compositions assembled from both lived experience and shared digital imagery.

Only then does the handmade begin. Using oil paint, acrylic, and metallic foil on linen, Giralda painstakingly recreates these imagined landscapes by hand. Every brushstroke transforms fleeting pixels into something tactile and enduring. The shimmering metallic details catch changing light throughout the day, echoing both the timeless tradition of classical painting and the luminous glow of contemporary screens.

The result is a landscape that feels remarkably familiar, yet could never exist in the physical world.

Santiago Giralda in his Madrid studio, prepping for his January 2025 solo show

Painting the Collective Imagination

Giralda's paintings are not depictions of specific destinations. Instead, they tap into something much deeper.

His compositions weave together universal symbols such as forests, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and trees, reflecting Carl Jung's concept of the collective unconscious. These archetypal forms are combined with visual references that feel unmistakably contemporary, recalling satellite imagery, cinema, digital maps, video games, and online culture.

Standing before one of his canvases often feels like recognising a place you've never actually visited. It is a strange but comforting experience, where personal memory and shared visual culture overlap.

L to R: Golden Jungle & Eclipse (2021)

Exhibitions That Expanded the Conversation

Over the past two decades, Santiago Giralda has established himself as one of Spain's compelling contemporary voices through exhibitions across Europe, the United States, and India.

His recent solo exhibition, Maps of the Invisible at Galerie ISA in Mumbai (2025), explored how memory, digital technology, and landscape intersect in today's visual culture. Earlier exhibitions including Light Years (Madrid, 2023), Honey Peak (Mumbai, 2021), Four Seasons (Madrid, 2019), Hábitat (New York, 2018), Rendering Landscapes, Interior/Exterior, and Outsider reveal the evolution of an artist continually reimagining what landscape painting can become in an increasingly digital world.

Alongside these exhibitions, Giralda's work has been showcased internationally at leading art fairs including ARCO Madrid, ArtBo Bogotá, Expo Chicago, and ArteSantander, earning recognition through prestigious honours such as the Caja Madrid Generación Award and the BMW Painting Award.

L: The Dancer (2024) at Maps of the Invisible solo showcase, Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India

R: Honey Peak (2021) at Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India 

A Real Yet Impossible Nature for the Today's Collector

One of Santiago Giralda's greatest strengths lies in dissolving the boundary between reality and imagination. Metallic foliage catches the light, water is suggested through carefully preserved empty spaces, and multiple perspectives unfold within a single canvas, revealing new details with every viewing. These are not literal landscapes but emotional ones, shaped by memory, technology, and contemplation.

For the modern collector, this makes Giralda's work far more than decorative art. His monumental paintings become architectural focal points that bring depth, stillness, and quiet reflection into contemporary interiors. They capture a distinctly modern experience of nature while reaffirming the timeless power of painting to slow us down and invite wonder.

L to R: Giardino, Vesta & Luft (2017) at Santiago Giralda’s Rome Studio

A Contemporary Vision of Landscape

Santiago Giralda does not paint nature as it once was. He paints nature as we remember it, imagine it, and increasingly experience it through the digital lens.

By seamlessly bridging photography, digital composition, and traditional painting, he creates works that feel timeless yet unmistakably contemporary. His landscapes challenge us to reconsider not only the places we inhabit, but also the countless images that shape our understanding of the world. In an age defined by screens, Santiago Giralda proves that the painted canvas still possesses the remarkable ability to slow us down, invite reflection, and reconnect us with wonder.