Hans Payán Geler is a multidisciplinary artist born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the oldest European
settlement in the Americas. Currently based in Shreveport, Louisiana, he paints, curates, and manages his own
studio at the Highland Center (520 Olive Street, Shreveport, LA 71104, USA).
Hans’s journey as an artist has been defined by movement, exploration, and cross-cultural dialogue. Having lived
and painted across multiple countries, his artistic identity reflects a synthesis of influences—Caribbean light and
rhythm, European technique, and an unrestrained contemporary sensibility. His work is both personal and universal,
drawing from memory, emotion, and heritage to celebrate human connection and the complexity of identity.
A graduate of fine arts training, Hans later chose to break free from the rigid academic structures of traditional
painting. His current style represents a liberated approach that fuses realism, abstraction, surrealism, and the
dreamlike. He views art as a space of freedom—one where color, texture, and movement communicate feelings
beyond language.
His chosen materials include acrylics, oils, pastels on Canson paper, and gouache, each coated with a protective
low-shine polyurethane that enhances color vibrancy while preserving the tactile presence of his brushwork. His
technical versatility allows him to shift fluidly between detailed portraiture, atmospheric seascapes, floral
compositions, and bold abstract explorations.
From 2006 to 2024, Hans owned and directed Heights Art Studios & Gallery in Houston, Texas—a vibrant
creative space that became both a community hub and an international bridge for artists. Through this work, he
connected artists from Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, curating dozens of exhibitions that showcased a
global artistic dialogue.
Today, in Shreveport, Hans continues this mission through his Highland Center Art Studio, where he paints,
exhibits, and mentors emerging artists while nurturing cultural exchange through art.
Artist Statement: “I went to fine arts school, but I have become liberated from all rules in painting.
I let my brushes dance between memory and imagination.
Each canvas becomes a passage — from Santo Domingo’s sunlight to Louisiana’s quiet mornings.”
Hans’s art is an exploration of color, identity, and belonging. Each painting is an act of translation—of lived
experience into visual poetry. His compositions weave together fragments of Caribbean memory, the sensuality of
the human form, and the organic movement of light and landscape.
Through the interplay of color and texture, Hans captures the tension between permanence and impermanence,
reality and illusion. His works are meditations on heritage, displacement, and the ways in which beauty can emerge
from cultural convergence. The result is art that feels both deeply rooted and timelessly fluid.