Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts
51 Sheboygan St - Fond Du Lac, WI 54935

Information: 920-921-5410

Rafael Francisco Salas is a Wisconsin-based painter who received his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. He combines landscape, the legacy of Byzantine iconography, portraiture, architecture and country music into artwork that evokes a strange, rural poetry. It reflects a personal journey of mixed race identity, conflict, beauty, and devotion played out on the vast landscapes of rural Wisconsin. The use of non-representational and still life elements in his artwork creates a dichotomy between figure and ground, between the perceived and the felt. Like the nature of the landscapes he observes, the artwork aspires toward a certain nobility, but often illuminates a poignant contrast to that aspiration. Salas is a contributing writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and associate professor of art at Ripon College. His work is represented by the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee.