Dr. Francesca Galliano is an award-winning fine artist who has exhibited in the United States and internationally. Born in the small town of Manzanillo, Cuba, she came to the U.S. in 1961 at the age of 12 with one of her brothers in a “Pedro Pan” flight airlifting children from Cuba. After becoming the mother of two, she became the first in her family to go to college and obtained several university degrees, including printmaking, painting, biology, and marketing, encompassing two tracks of study—art and science. Although seemingly disparate, to Francesca they were inseparable. She had been obsessed with how the interaction of neurology, biology, and psychology affected people’s perception of reality, of beauty, and of the sublime after realizing that her then one-year-old son was not able to distinguish between red and green hues.
During the completion of an interdisciplinary PhD, she developed a decision-making theory employing neuropsychobiological principles that she then tested in a marketing context. She also found that these same principles were especially relevant to the communication of emotional and spiritual content. Two applications of these insights to artworks are in the design of their underlying structures and their patterns of values. Dr. Galliano subsequently conducted academic research and taught at universities in the U.S. Due to advancing multiple sclerosis (MS), she left Penn State University and returned to Miami, Florida, in 2000 to be with her children and grandchildren and to form Galliano Studios with her husband.
Interestingly, the deterioration of Francesca’s motor skills and vigor due to advancing MS forced her to stop all activities extraneous to art making and to learn the use of electric and electronic tools so that she could continue creating. These changes also forced her to approach art in a very different way and provided the impetus for the merging of her art-creating passions—carving, painting, and metalwork. Along the way, she developed a creative process that draws on the artist’s emotional, intellectual, and kinesthetic experiences to facilitate the expression of deep insights gained through studies and life events.
Dr. Galliano’s art is an exploration of spiritual beliefs where nature is the central figure. Its aim is to nourish the soul and expand the intellect. She primarily uses organic forms, flux, and movement to represent her personal iconography and myth making. While she bases the iconography on ancient symbols that continue to resonate within us, Francesca captures movement and flux by using rhythmic lines, textures, and expressionistic color harmonies. These materialize as she uses carving, painting, and metalworking techniques to interlay and construct mixed media artwork firmly anchored within a spiritual context. The resulting tension between modern tools and classical techniques infuses her work with artistic vitality.
An additional element in Francesca's latest creations is the addition of what Francesca calls “environments.” While acting as a “frame,” a hand-sculpted environment is part of the piece itself, continues an image’s theme, adds to its beauty, and increases its impact by providing a context and completing its statement.
