Portraiture is the backbone of Shizu Saldamando's work, people and their features are her artistic commitment . Mainly, individuals with blank backgrounds independent of their context, for her it is better that their bodies and expressions tell the story and that this objective does not have the setting.

Shizu is the daughter of a Japanese-American mother and a Chicano father, born in San Francisco and dedicating her career to highlighting subcultures and investigating social constructs through her art. Drawing from her personal cultural perspective, Shizu offers an intimate view of portraiture featuring friends, fellow artists, queer and black activists, and individuals who are often not highlighted or elevated in contemporary culture—people she simply admires. Her work functions as both homage to, and documentation of, countercultures in and around Northeast Los Angeles.

Shizu has already questioned in some of her interviews whether there really is a need for more images and paintings about immigrants struggling and fighting to survive. For her, there must be a better narrative, a Latin experience more valuable than the trauma itself. In her drawings and paintings there is an intimacy that transmits to the viewer the moments of vulnerability of the subject. For Saldamando , these people do not have to be specifically people of color, honorable or who died, they do not have to be martyrs, they can just be recognizable and that's it, people with whom one can identify and create a connection.

Shizu's drawings, paintings, sculptures and videos have been exhibited both nationally and internationally experimenting with a wide range of surfaces and materials. In addition to painting, she has an already successful tattoo practice, specialising in portrait tattoos.