Monica Salazar
Monica D. Salazar moved to the USA from Ecuador twelve years ago to pursue her career in Art and has never looked back. She recently moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she is currently working and collaborating with fellows at The Alternative Gallery. She attended Temple University, graduating in 2015, and has done mostly freelance and private work in the time since. Monica expresses and translates her ideas through a variety of mediums ranging from drawing to painting to digital design. Her main focus and priority is in working with young creative minds. She has tutored both privately and professionally during her Art career and currently volunteers her Saturdays to a community program for local children at the Alternative Gallery. Most recently she was involved in an open house event entitled “Tear It Down!” This was a collective exhibition of a variety of Hispanic heritage artists.
Artist Statement
I am an artist and illustrator and my work tends to be surreal inspired by a world separate from the one we live in. I enjoy creating characters and giving them a personality or a role within their space. Sometimes I take critical views of social issues in a dream-like manner. Surrealism and fantasy combined with real ideas help me to inform the viewer about a specific issue. I like to use a combination of vivid and bright colors while working with a variety of mediums. My selection of color is always based on complementaries in the color wheel. I like to experiment with a range of various materials but my favorite is wood. I prefer to create a piece of art that belongs to a diptych or a polyptych. By making more than one single artwork the arrangement and the display also play a very important factor of how the work is received visually.
The use of mixed media gives me great freedom of expression in a variety of themes. Prior to creating the final piece I sketch my vision on a piece of paper. This sketch goes with me almost everywhere. With this sketch my creative energies for visual art are channeled and allow me to explore the dream like world in my mind. I want all of my artwork tell a story to the viewer. I want to be able to communicate visually in a world that needs to be reminded constantly of the social issues we face in our lifetime. My expression through art is how I voice my opinions and offer support to these problems we all face daily
