Maria Carmen Salis, known as Carmen Salis, is a painter born in Angera (VA) on 17 July 1967, lives and works in Sardinia. From an early age she demonstrated a talent for drawing by receiving her first palette, a gift from her mother, at the age of 13.

She meets the Tuscan painter Francesco Colaccichi who, noticing her talent for drawing, persuades her to undertake artistic studies. So she attended the “Foiso Fois” Art High School in Cagliari, learning the teachings of professors Franco Meloni and Primo Pantoli, masters of painting on the Sardinian artistic scene.

After the artistic maturity she attended a three-year regional course on the restoration of paintings. Here you will have the opportunity to stay in close contact with the altarpieces of the Superintendent of Cagliari, to learn about the works of the Sardinian masters of the 1400s and 1500s (such as the master of Castelsardo and the masters Pietro and Michele Cavaro) and to deepen your knowledge of the tempera technique with egg.

This technique will then be the basis for her paintings in her pictorial research. In 1996 she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and in 2001 she obtained, with full marks, a degree in Painting, obtaining the title of Master. At the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, famously known as an international school of sculpture and meeting place for many artists, her training will follow the teachings of Umberto Buscioni, Omar Galliani, Gabriele Giromella and Giovanna Bombarda who will direct her towards the study of figurative painting .

In 2003 she obtained her teaching qualification and since 2004 she has taught Art and Image. In parallel with teaching she also continues her creative research and pictorial study, she participates in numerous exhibitions and awards throughout Italy.

Defined by some critics as “the Painter of silence”, her pictorial research is personal where the dreamlike, surreal and metaphysical blend in a perfect formal and chromatic balance, presenting subjects and themes in her paintings through an original, elegant and contemporary introspective vision .