For God and Country: Rafael Francisco Salas

Please join us at a reception for the opening of Rafael Francisco Salas: For God and Country on Friday, June 21 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Portrait Society Gallery, 207 E. Buffalo Street, Fifth Floor.

The exhibition will run through August 3, 2019. The gallery is located in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. The artist will present a gallery talk on Gallery Day, July 20 at 3 p.m.

For God and Country presents approximately 40 works in various media that reflect on the experience of living in rural America. In Salas’ work, barren landscapes and mysterious figures play out ambiguous narratives. Most of the paintings are set in winter, in dusk or dawn, where an ominous light signals a kind of loneliness. Salas grew up in rural Wisconsin, the son of a Mexican-American migrant farming family. While he was considered Mexican, he did not speak Spanish, and, like many bi-racial individuals, experienced a kind of displacement, thinking of himself as an “outlier.” Salas took an intellectual route, completing his undergraduate degree at Macalaster and his MFA at New York Academy of Art in 2003. He now teaches in the art department of Ripon College, not too far from where he grew up.