GRAPHIC PAINTINGS (with a splash of politics and topped with Hip Hop)
Inside The Life
Born in New York City's emerging uptown neighborhood of Washington Heights to Dominican immigrant parents, M.Tony Peralta was a child of the hip-hop generation. His love of hip-hop music and imagery, together with a traditional Dominican upbringing in the streets of NYC, fueled his early interest in visual art. "I was always a serious aficionado of graffiti and its graphic characters," he says. His first art influences were actually characters in Marvel Comics books and his early love of drawing continued to evolve throughout his school years. As a teenager, his eye shifted to graffiti and the work of New York downtown artist Keith Haring; at age 17, Peralta transferred his own artwork onto t-shirts, which he sold in his neighborhood.
Armed with a Media Arts degree from Long Island University, Peralta began his career as a Design Director at a boutique PR/marketing agency in Manhattan. His in-house work designing logos, Web sites and promotional materials for clients opened up outside opportunities to design graphics for fashion companies like Drunknmunky, Mad Soul, Snoop Dogg Clothing and others. From there, he designed boys and girls' accessories, then made the leap to crafting women's accessories for major fashion brands like Baby Phat, Kathy Van Zeeland and Oscar de la Renta.
Most recently 34-year-old Peralta has linked with The Sound of Art, and has been putting brush to canvas. As a result, he is developing a solid following and has sold several limited-edition posters and paintings. Currently he's chosen to express his art in the medium of screen-printing, Tony has developed a popular, street-oriented t-shirt line that is currently available at cool street-wear boutiques in the U.S. and Canada (select Peralta-designed shirts and hoodies have also been worn by music superstars Sean 'Diddy' Combs and Sean Kingston).
Influences
Unfairness, Racism, bigotry, poverty and the ghetto. Those things influence me everyday. It's my job to be a voice and make a statement for those who can't or don't know how to say something.
Soundtrack
DE LA SOUL'S-ME, MYSELF and I
MOS DEF-MR.NIGGA
BRAND NUBIAN-WAKE UP
Artist Since
the first day of Kindergarten and I got in trouble for drawing to much attention to myself in class cause I was drawing a fellow student.
Goal
I want my artwork to be exposed to more people of color from the block to the boardroom and for my work to go international.
