Born into an artistic family, Dorian Vallejo's career began in his late teens when he began illustrating book covers while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York. As the field increasingly began to incorporate the use of computer-generated images, Vallejo felt the need to pursue other avenues with his art. His love of traditional media and the figure, drew him to portraiture and to focus on personal work, which shows in galleries. These days Vallejo spends most of his time creating paintings and drawings for sale through galleries.

Artist's Statement: Much of the art I create engages a fascination I have with several ideas that over lap both philosophically and aesthetically. I'm interested in the psychology of our inner selves, the conscious explorationand the interplay between the two realms of existence. Essentially, I see that process and our challenge to balance the lighter and darker sides of our persona as a beautiful dance.

I am also interested in beauty as a symbolic metaphor. The contemplative spectacle of which representsthe struggle between the limits of life and the quest for excellence. (arete as it relates to agon)

Although I have a real appreciation for the spontaneous beauty inherent in a naturalist impulse or life as it is, much of my thought involves some level of complexity that suggests a symbolic narrative. Increasingly, what I find exciting is to deviate from direct observation in exploration of territory that both challenge and surprise me and can in some way relate to the concepts, observations and questions about life that I find interesting.

Primarily, I use a sort of dream world of floating figures, forests, and natural motifs to suggest the realm of the unconscious and the duality of existence because it is there, creatively that I can express a philosophical ideal of heroism that (to loosely paraphrase one of my favorite philosophers) corresponds to my sense of Life as I believe it could be and ought to be. My work is my "Yes" to life.