My name is Koldo Barroso and this is my story

Art and Illusion: these are the keys to my work. I believe that we are all surrounded by a supernatural world of creatures and living forms. They co-habit with us, they influence our thoughts, feelings and actions and are present in the most important moments of our life. Sometimes we notice these energies with our minds, other times we can sense them with our spirit and even see them with our physical eyes. My passion is to make visible this invisible world to your eyes.

Ever since I was a child I’ve lived inside an invisible bubble where I could discover a world of my own: drawing impossible worlds of imaginary characters and improvising neverendig stories with plastic figures. As a teenager, I used to spend Saturday nights diving in the art section of the bookstores. This way, I discovered books like “Fairies” by Brian Froud and Alan Lee, “Hallelujah Anyway” by Patrick Woodroffe, “Views” by Roger Dean. These books changed my life! They gave me a completely new scope and opened me up to a wonderful universe of possibilities to share my inner world.

From that moment on, my dream has always been to make someone else feel the same magic that I experienced when I first had these books in my hands: a timeless feeling of entering into a strangely familiar parallel reality that I feel as my own, sitting in my bedroom in a Saturday evening, completely mesmerized while hearing the raindrops on my window…

My impossible stories and grotesque characters are not simple fantasy. They are my personal baggage: a collection of personal experiences that I have collected throughout the years. I lived the bohemian life of Madrid in the late 80’s where I met the most diverse artists and peculiar people in tiny attics and ‘tertulia cafes’; I traveled like a hobo along the woods, mountains, caves, and coasts of Spain, France and Great Britain and filled my bag with stories and anecdotes; I took part in surrealistic experimental sessions to stimulate the imagination hosted by reputed Spanish Children’s literature authors; I drove myself into mysterious regressive adventures to explore my inner spiritual universe. Then I decided it was time to sit at the drawing board and start putting all this on paper.

My latest publication is “Kooky Pets”, a book for children and adult people featuring my storytelling and illustration.

Please contact me by email.