Two multidisciplinary artists grapple with the uncertainty of existence and life after experiencing loss

Contracommon is proud to present Shifting Terrain, a two-person exhibition featuring San Antonio artist Kristina Salinas and her mentor Thomas Crowther, an artist and educator who resides in Augusta, Georgia. Shifting Terrain will be on view in our gallery from July 11th through August 6th, 2026. Contracommon’s gallery is open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6pm. Private weekday viewing appointments can be scheduled at: calendly.com/contracommon. An opening reception will take place on Saturday July 11th from 4-7pm; it is free and open to the public.

Thomas Crowther & Kristina Salinas’s Shifting Terrain is a pictorial examination of how forces of nature, both internal and external, unravel the illusion of order—turning pristine façades into shattered wreckage; fleeting remnants of what once was. The artists explore the undeniably relevant throughline of unforeseen events and damages incurred, through various media including representational and non-representational painting, drawing and printmaking techniques.

It is within both artists’ métier to explore the intricacies of twoness in their work, and this exhibition is rife with possibility as each explores issues of identity, belonging, fragmentation, transformation and various states of disorder. The works, newly and recently created, serve as portals, offering glimpses at underpinnings to memory and identity buried beneath the wreckage. They are autobiographical narratives as well as metaphorical statements on mental health and the psychological undercurrents at play. 

Shifting Terrain is borne out of commonality as both Crowther and Salinas have, like so many, grappled with crises of identity that comes with the passage of time, of living through loss, of major life events and of the pressure of expectation.