About the Artist

A Life Between Three Worlds

A moment of stillness in the shores of Cuba — where imagination and observation first met.

From Havana to Barcelona to Los Angeles — a story of longing, resilience, and artistic evolution.

I was born in 1980 in Havana, Cuba — a place of immense beauty and complex contradictions.
My mother was a linguist. My father, José Fernández Milera, was a renowned biologist and malacologist. From a very young age, I accompanied him on fieldwork expeditions along Cuba’s coasts and countryside. That’s where I learned to observe the natural world with reverence — and where my imagination began to take root.

Art was always part of me. I was a gifted, ambidextrous child who didn’t fit easily into the system — especially not Cuba’s rigid, state-controlled education. I wore my hair long, questioned authority, and gravitated toward things that were seen as strange or nonconforming. I was bullied for being different — for being myself — and I had to learn early how to defend who I was.
My mother enrolled me in every sport she could, but it was martial arts that taught me how to hold my ground. More than a discipline, it became a philosophy — a quiet strength that brought me peace and helped me survive.

Despite the obstacles, I pursued my calling. I studied at the prestigious Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, focusing on Classical and Contemporary Painting, Drawing, Illustration, and Printmaking. Still, being an artist in Cuba meant walking a narrow line. If you didn’t align with the regime, your voice could be silenced. I tried to build a future there — but without compromising my integrity, it felt impossible.

All the while, I was also caring for my parents — first my father, then my mother — through illness, loss, and relentless scarcity. I never abandoned them. I stayed by their side until the end, even as the country I loved made it nearly impossible to survive.

For years, I was denied the right to claim my Spanish citizenship — something I was entitled to through my father’s ancestry. He was deeply idealistic and loyal to the revolution, and he refused to allow me dual nationality. After his passing, I was finally able to obtain my Spanish passport and leave the island.

My wife and I moved to Barcelona, where we built a new chapter of our lives. I continued developing my visual language — working as an illustrator, exhibiting my work, and serving as a resident artist and curator at Galería Magnet, a gallery dedicated to Cuban art. I also studied digital art at Escola Joso, expanding my skill set into digital painting, comics art, illustration, and mixed media. I still return to those tools, especially for narrative work like the graphic novel I’m currently illustrating — a visual retelling of Pan.

After several years in Spain, we made another leap — this time to the United States, in search of new possibilities. I now live and work in Los Angeles, with my heart still stretched across three homelands: Cuba, Spain, and the U.S. These lands — their cultures, their tensions, their textures — shape everything I create. My studio may be here now, but a part of it will always remain in Cuba, where it all began.

Some days, I feel like a fish swimming in deep, dark waters — not always sure where I belong, but always moving forward, led by the visions I carry inside.