About Us

Charles Salley was born in Chicago in 1941. One of eighteen children. He drove himself to New Mexico, built a career as a painter and printmaker in the Santa Fe art community, founded The Black Kachina gallery, and spent forty years making work that defied every label anyone tried to put on it. Surrealist.

Political. Figurative. Social commentary. None of them fully covered it.

He passed in 2001. The paintings, the lithographic plates, the watercolors, the charcoals — they stayed in the family. His son has spent years making sure the work finds the audience it was always meant for.

Charles Salley Art Print Tees is the part of that mission that says art should not live only in galleries.

Every design in our collection comes directly from the original works in the Charles Salley estate —paintings and prints made between the 1960s and the 1990s across oils, acrylics, watercolor, charcoal, and lithography. Political works. Spiritual works. Western and Americana imagery. Portraits. Sacred figures. Work made with the kind of intention that does not go out of style.

We call it wearable art. Not because it is a clever phrase, but because that is exactly what it is. These are not graphic tees with art-inspired prints. They are original artworks — from a real collection, by a real artist, with a real history — made accessible to people who want to carry something meaningful.

The price point is deliberately democratic. Charles Salley made his work for the world, not for a collector class. This brand exists to honor that.

A percentage of every sale goes toward clean water, shelter, and food production in communities that need it most. That is not a marketing line. It is a commitment that came with the brand from the beginning.

If you are wearing a Charles Salley tee, you are wearing forty years of an artist's life. You are wearing Chicago. You are wearing Santa Fe. You are wearing the Black Kachina. You are wearing something that was made to last.

Shop the collection: charlessalleyartprinttees.com