Today we’d like to introduce you to Rafael Francisco Salas.
Hi Rafael Francisco, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Rafael Francisco Salas is a Wisconsin based artist. He combines landscape, the legacy of portraiture, architecture, and country music into artwork evoking a singular, rural poetry. He is represented by Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Salas has also worked as an arts writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Newcity Art Chicago, The Isthmus Magazine and Urban Milwaukee.
In 2022, Governor Tony Evers appointed Rafael Francisco Salas to the Wisconsin Arts Board, the state agency responsible for the support and development of the arts throughout Wisconsin. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Salas is a Professor of Art at Ripon College in Ripon, WI.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Art is the most rewarding and challenging of pursuits. Trying to observe and document the world in the multitudes it contains is my goal. That means that my artwork contains both beauty and tragedy. Finding a compelling image that can do all of that at the same time is my life’s work.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My artwork reflects on American tradition and identity. It speaks to an indignant desire for a dream continually just beyond reach. It is a strange, rural poetry of aspiration and poignant reality, a striver’s endeavor of high and low culture, situated between the elevated and the abject.
Country music is the appropriate soundtrack.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Do not stop working. Always have a project in process. Even when it’s bad, and it will be bad at times, something is happening that might work out later. Keep working.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rafaelsalas.com
- Instagram: rafaelfsalas
