“Precocious Artist”
BY PASCUAL RUIZ URIBE
Plastic artist | Medellín, Colombia
June 29, 2024
Tomás Salazar was born in Medellín in 2005, he is 18 years old and since he was 14 he has actively participated in the artistic life of the region. He has lived in Rionegro since he was five years old. He began his art studies at the age of eight with Professor Juan Pablo González and continued with the plastic artist Betty Cárdenas. He began to be concerned about a deeper training and contacted me to give him a personalized workshop. I was reluctant due to his youth and the decision to move away from teaching, he convinced me and attended several workshops in which I focused on the field of criteria and the importance of design and the proper use of materials, he discovered the magic of charcoal and I even gave him a very peculiar spatula . At the same time, he works with the El Retiro teacher Luis Guillermo Mejía Vallejo who strengthens his confidence in expression with acrylic painting.
He is color blind, which influences his very special handling of his color palette. From the age of 14 he began to participate in group exhibitions. Currently he exhibits repeatedly, confronts his expression with various audiences, in 2022 he participates in the First Cali Biennial of Contemporary Art and wins a statuette for the best figurative work. Very bold, he appears with an American collector and representative of artists, surprises him with his presentation and much more with his works, acquires some and begins to represent him in the USA.
Something similar happened with the art curator at the Hacienda Castilla art gallery in Pereira, Juan Jiménez. Last year he received an academic bachelor's degree from the Pontifical Bolivarian University of Marinilla and is pursuing a diploma in art history at the University of Lux, Mexico. Reluctant to enroll in a university, I insist on the importance that today's world is giving to diplomas and that you must obtain a degree, even if you consider them unnecessary for artists, following an exploration trip through Germany, England, France and Spain in 2024 he discovers in Valencia Spain a university that offers him what he aspires to, following my advice, he is in the final procedures to reside there. Currently we can enjoy the “GOD SAVE THE KING” exhibition at the Dann Carlton hotel.
