M.TONY PERALTA

Born in New York City’s emerging uptown neighborhood of Washington Heights to Dominican immigrant parents, 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.

Most recently 37-year-old Peralta has linked with The Sound of Art, an upper Manhattan entity that represents urban artists of different disciplines from around the world, 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 streetwear boutiques in the U.S. ,Canada and Japan. This past summer he delved into eyewear by designing a collection of limited-edition men’s sunglasses for República Eyewear sold in selected boutiques New York City.