Jeremy Salazar

Native American artist Jeremy Salazar is a contemporary painter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He specializes in vibrant acrylic portraitures with a combination of abstraction and realism. “What I try to emphasize in my work are the eyes and facial expressions of my characters, making these more realistic and full of depth while the rest of the composition fades away into abstract colors. The color schemes set the mood while the face gives life to the painting.”

Having been born and raised on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Jeremy has never received any formal art training and is consequently a self-taught artist. Yet his humble upbringing on the reservation has helped shaped his artistic paradigm and purpose for art. “I grew up without running water and electricity—old dirt roads, sagebrush, out in the middle of nowhere. Although a meager upbringing, it was in retrospect, an open canvas for me as a young kid. It is a passion for me to help represent the authentic native arts as an authentic native artist. We as native peoples know our own stories best, the ones who lived it, the storytellers.”

Using a bold and vibrant color palette in every painting, Jeremy has come on the scene as a promising emerging artist. Making both a statement of reclaiming authentic native artwork done by native hands and also painted stories of color and faces of the Native American people.