“Ironically, this splendid marriage of image and word sprung out of the need to confront the end of a marriage. This is what artists do with sorrow and loss: they create beauty and meaning. Salazar's paintings are stirring and original. Pearlman's verses are the perfect complements to the images. Pearlman the poet captures some small suggestion in each of Salazar's richly painted pictures and develops it into a succinct, musical quatrain that somehow evokes the feeling of the picture and yet still allows the viewer his or her own experience. By themselves, the pieces work well, but together the images and poems create a moving testament of the power of love to move beyond heartbreak into something grander than it ever was.”
Pat MacEnulty PhD, Author of Time to Say Goodbye

The images, while heralding the Mexican landscape, nevertheless do not single it out. Instead the Mexican Vibrations series are a totally new way to examine Mexico, the land and its people, recognizing how difficult it is to place a positive perspective artistically on a churning Mexican landscape. It is as Carlos Fuentes said in is Introduction to the photography journal, Mexico: A Higher Vision: “Everything in Mexico vibrates simultaneously, perhaps because the clouds constantly soften the harshness of the imperious Mexican elements, so none truly triumphs over the other.”

This book presents two painting series by Salazar: Tonalpohalli: The Count of Fate and Convergence: 2002. Twenty is a magical number in Mexico, as is seven, thirteen and fifty-two. They relate to a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used during the Maya civilization in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The calendar did not originate with the Maya. In the Náhuatl language twenty is the number of fingers and toes on a human being and is descriptive of a whole person. Náhuatl is still very much a living language in Mexico.

Mexican Secrets is that it? Simply divulge what you are about in words and images sir, walk away from the pit you have dug for yourself in life? No, I think, not! For if you must carry secrets as baggage in your journey down life's pathway you must recognize as well that it isn't easy to toss the secrets asidewalk awayjust as it is equally difficult to schlep them forward. It appears impossible to rid yourself of the meaning you have placed on them indeed, stamped on them they continue toensnare you: another burdensome self-inflicted piece of baggage. As life is for living, you may in fact bridle your thirst for it by first tasting the bitterness it possesses. No matter what means of action you take, you live with the past secrets in the here and now. You must shoulder them and bear on.

Roland Salazar Rose

Collaboration can become a kind of investigation of the emotional possibilities between the two forms. The brevity of the quatrains and the electricity of the small but potent images make up a sort of force field where the two forms are replenishing each other, as in good conversation, or between bass and piano in a jazz duet.
As Robert Creeley says regarding his own collaborations with painters, the response to image is not necessarily about conscious understanding, but of 'picking up the vibes' that the image generates. As in all potent art, the unconscious enters in, and we get an intuitive play that perhaps startles or gathers responsive momentum or a dance between the two forms. There is a mystery involved that partakes of light and sound, image and response, rhythm and joy, word and visual idea.

Bill Pearlman