Globalization and new technologies have created a new communication between people, where the most written and spoken language is English. Although I launched this new version of my website in Portuguese and English, I decided for now to leave the English language as the only language for promoting my work.

I am a Portuguese artist that 2 years ago took on the pseudonym José da Nazaré Projecto, paying homage to my mother and father, who both died as victims of COVID-19.

José Projecto, José Martins Projecto, and José da Nazaré Projecto are the same person when identifying my originals and reproductions.

I have many fond memories of a childhood that was essentially urban but deeply influenced by the rural activities of my maternal grandfather and father.

Fascinated by the shapes and colours of everything around me, the desire to represent gradually grew, accentuated at first by a fertile imagination where fiction and reality blended, under the influence of the comics I consumed avidly throughout my youth.

I made my debut in the publishing world with small editions and later with "Agência Portuguesa de Revistas" and "Editorial Futura." At the age of twenty-two, I began to swap fiction for reality, taking on the values that had endured since my childhood, and in the following years, I dedicated myself exclusively to painting, illustration, and contemplating nature.

Used to the "black and white" world of my comic strips, I needed to explore a technique that would best portray my observations of animal life. I ended up establishing a good relationship with watercolours and acrylics, also using gouache to illustrate some of my work. My passion for nature photography was, and still is, the starting point for many of my works. I can't separate it from painting, and most of my originals are imagined through the viewfinder of a camera or an optical eyepiece.

I've worked for 38 years as a Philatelic illustrator, with hundreds of originals reproduced in this field all over the world in various Philatelic collections.

Since 1979, I have held various editions and exhibitions and have received a number of national and international prizes and awards.

If you'd like to know more about me, visit an interview published in a Portuguese Comics Blog on August 28, 2021, which gives a lot of details about my career as an artist.

I would like to thank my family and all my friends who have contributed in some way to the dissemination of my work.

Thank you for your visit.

José Projecto.

2024