WAUKESHA – A New York artist who identifies with the human struggle to unleash the spirit will exhibit his paintings at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha Fine Arts Center Gallery November 22-December 23. Rafael Francisco Salas also will present an artist’s talk on Monday, November 22, at noon in Commons 101. The campus is located at 1500 N. University Dr. Waukesha.
Admission to both the gallery, which will be open Mondays from 1:00-3:00 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon-1:00 p.m., Fridays from 9:00 a.m.-noon, and during special events, and the lecture is free and open to the public. For additional times to view the work, contact the University Relations office at (262) 521-5445.
Depicting what he calls “phantoms in the mind,” Salas paints fantasies in a realistic, or sometimes surrealistic, form. Emphasizing dark colors, he shows single female figures with bleak faces, a man with a bull’s head, and caged birds, all trapped by “possible pasts one wished were true, which turn like the seasons into what one wishes never was,” Salas offers.
Salas studied at the University of Georgia in Cortona, Italy, earned a BA in art and education with an English minor from Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, and completed his MFA cum laude at the New York Academy of Art, New York, in 2003. He works from his studio in Brooklyn.
He taught Native Arts Workshops as an artist in residency in Thoreau, NM, partly through a foundation grant, and has taught in public schools in New York, Minneapolis, and Belen, NM. He’s exhibited in New York, the Twin Cities, Iowa City, and Rhode Island, and had his work included in publications, the 2000 Writer’s Voice, and as editor’s choice in the 1994 Chanter Magazine.
UW-Waukesha has the largest enrollment among the 13 freshman-sophomore UW Colleges campuses. For information about programs, admission, or financial aid, contact the Student Services office at (262) 521-5200 or visit the Web at waukesha.uwc.edu.
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