Who will save us now?

Even adults say the world is a scary place — remember how it was when you were a kid?

In a society that bombards its members with visual stimuli, Rebecca Salazar, a painter and UNM alumna, said media have a significant impact on the people who consume them. She said numerous studies on how media consumption affects viewers show they absorb the emotion of what they see, like when people who were actually far removed from 9/11 took it personally.

“So what’s happening is you have a lot more aggression in general,” she said. “One way to kind of bring that back down is first to be aware, then not allow yourself to see so much stimulation.”

She said she finds herself soaking up everything she sees. Like replacing one addiction with another, to Salazar painting is a coping mechanism that she has relied on since she was 14 years old.

“The more social issues that come up or tragedies that happen in the world, pain among humanity, instead of thinking about it and making myself anxious, I paint,” she said. “I think it’s just my own personal way of dealing with all the turmoil in the world.”

“Who Will Save Us Now?” is Salazar’s latest collection and will be shown at the Cellar Door gallery from tomorrow until Oct. 2. The opening reception will be held next Friday, Sept. 9 at the gallery.

This collection concludes a concept she’s been working on for a while. The prime subject focuses on children as superheroes, though not ostensibly in peril.

“So then it (the child) becomes the hero, the savior; the idea of them in these situations, improving it, prevailing in the situation,” she said. “I think often times people see it, and they think, ‘Oh, you’re painting a child in a fearful situation.’ It’s my perspective, that doesn’t mean people necessarily get it.”

Salazar said many viewers have failed to grasp that to look at the world through children’s eyes gives adults the perspective they need in order to spur positive change, and ultimately, create a better world.

That’s how art is, Salazar said: rather than saving the day with physical force, she is hoping to inspire by sharing a point of view she still understands and connects with.

“I do have a kid, and that’s been sort of recent,” she said. “You get a whole different focus on the world when you have a child. … I’ve worked in preschools and been a nanny, and so that was another thing. You can always ask kids how to solve problems.

They’d always be like, ‘Well, why are people upset?’ It’s so complicated, explaining why people do horrible things. They have very simple answers for these things.”

Jessica Duverneay, owner of Cellar Door, said she agrees the message is not immediately apparent. More show than tell, she said the paintings illustrate a window in time for the viewer to create his or her own context.

“When you look at her paintings, they’re really narrative,” she said. “There’s something going on, and you’re looking at a crucial turning point in whatever story is happening. It gives the viewer a chance to think of what happened before and what’s going to happen after. They’re very cinematic; they say a lot more than you’re actually seeing on the canvas.”

Salazar’s former art professor Nancy Pauly said Salazar’s superior technical skill surpasses that of most students in her experience and is on par with masters like Rembrandt. She said viewers are struck initially by this aesthetic appeal, then drawn in further by the “quizzical” nature of the paintings.

“What’s so amazing in her work is it’s satirical — she’s really funny,” she said. “Your curiosity is definitely piqued; you’re brought into it. She grabs your attention in a really amusing, comical way, yet you also feel this sense of the tragic.

Cellar Door typically opts to show “creepy” items, and Duverneay said this collection doesn’t really fit, thematically speaking.

Despite this, She said the meticulous execution of the well-developed, cohesive body of work convinced her to accept the collection.

“I think people will spend less time trying to nit-pick each painting and more time really just blown away by the technical superiority of these pieces,” she said. “It’s not just ‘Oh, randomly this painting got made.’ It’s very intentional work.”