Dominique Salvador

I am a french ecuadorian painter who was born and grew up in Quito, Ecuador. After attending the local french school, I studied art history and painting in the USA, at Boston University. After completing my degrees, i went back to Quito where I started painting portraits under commission, and I realized that I absolutely love the challenge of painting people, and being capable of representing their background,their reality, their personality, their energy, their soul through an image. During that time, I exhibited many times in my country and I also represented Ecuador at the Beijing biennale 2008, as well as at the exhibition Olympic fine Arts in the same city. In 2010, I exhibited my work at Opera Gallery Hong Kong, where I showed a series of paintings depicting homeless children of the world; wonderful and magic characters despite their social and economical situation. In 2011, I decided to live in Morocco where i started a series of paintings inspired in men of that country. After staying four years, i came back to Ecuador and I am now working again on commissions as well as on a new series of paintings inspired in Iraq, that I visited in 2017.
In the sensitive an fragile world we live in now, I started a project talking about humanity; about how beyond all our differences, we are all human beings. That is why, after visiting many refugee camps in Iraq, I started a series of paintings involving war refugees in a hope to sensitize the world about the urge of making a change, and about the importance of tolerance, peace, and love. ‘Soumaya’ is part of this new series of paintings.

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 14^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.