Born in Long Beach, Salzwedel creates translucent landscapes that shift in and out of solid and ethereal states. Like fluid worlds suspended in a cycle of perpetual haunting, the imagery often feels loosely real but undeniably hallucinated and invoked. His works play with the depiction of these unhinged natural and hyperbolically unnatural physical states, combining sparse terrains with fictional mountain ranges and shadowy, diaphanous atmospheres. His mixed-media drawing-based works are created using a combination of graphite, mylar and resin, tape, colored pencil, and ink.