About the Artist

Like many talented artists, Arlene Salmon has been creative since childhood, when, according to her mother’s accounts, she would only ask for crayons at Christmas. Crayons, it seems, were the gateway into a deep passion for art that led to summer art camps at the Worcester Museum of Art, and she eventually went on to Moore College of Art and majored in Interior Design, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. During her evenings, she took oil painting classes. She started a family, and when her son was 18 months old, his curiosity became the undoing of his mother’s pursuit of painting. “He was standing beside me at the easel and grabbed a paintbrush full of paint and proceeded to put it in his mouth,” she says. “I packed my paints away and didn’t paint again until years later.”

Despite her long absence from painting, Salmon’s talents never left her. Nor did her desire to create. Still, she did not pick up a brush again until 2016, when her youngest was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “It was recommended that I, as a caretaker, needed to find something I loved,” she recalls. “I started taking painting classes at the Art League in Alexandria, VA, and somehow ended up in a pastel class. My heart ignited, seeing the colorful sticks of medium. It was like being a kid again with a new box of crayons. I struggled at first but signed up for an ocean wave painting workshop and found a way to incorporate catching the light spilling through the rolling waves.” 

Salmon continued to paint, and she now uses her work to raise money for lymphoma and leukemia fundraisers and to donate to research for new clinicals trials. Over the past seven years, she has used the inspiration of the Lowcountry salt marshes and the intense beauty of the ocean to drive her pieces, conveying what she sees through her pastels. “When people look at my paintings, a relaxed peaceful feeling comes over them that ends in a smile,” she says. “Seeing that makes me feel that I have done my job well interpreting what I see onto paper.”

Salmon is a member of the Pastel Society of America, and her work can be purchased through her website. A donation for every painting will be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.