“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

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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.”

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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.

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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

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Why did I do the Aztec Deities Series when obviously I could never present a true appreciation of the majesty of this time in history? I didn’t research the mythology on the God Tonatiuh, which translates as “He Who Makes the Day” and use this as a basis for the painting. I let my imagination take hold and this guided me to represent the gods.

Clearly this work represents a “gringo” contemporary artist’s understanding and view of a period in history when gods & goddesses abounded and when a vast military and civil society was destroyed for ‘conquest: for gold’ and in the name ofchurch and state. 

As for me, I did not seek out the gods and goddess; they came to me! 

Once in a long decade or two, an artist emerges with something to say which we need to hear at this very moment. He speaks to our grappling for understanding of the world; he nudges our emotions and awakens the ability to question, to seek the great "aha" in the midst of whirling confusion. Roland Salazar Rose is such an artist: he has become a soul painter.

In his latest book, "The Chaos Trilogy," he presents three series of his paintings whose themes have emerged from, and relate to Chaos Theory as defined by Edward N. Lorenz, whom Rose quotes: "A butterfly, flapping its wings in Hong Kong, may change the tornado pattern in Texas." Maestro Salazar’s works cause us to see with microscopic precision, but also through the scopes of satellites. He combines all of his many resources in this series. He describes in his dead-on observant prose not only the theoretical foundations of this collective work, but also the methods and materials, which relate directly to the subject matter. One has hardly encountered such an integrated body of work—the themes relate to the compositions and subjects; the materials themselves relate to the very heart of Mexico and her environmental health and ills. Our world is rendered; it is described; it is revealed in ways, which one cannot speak of. The wings of Salazar’s butterfly strokes change the tornado patterns of our souls. This is art at its peak of mastery.  

Review by: Cheri Long - is a freelance writer and book editor whose articles and poems have been published in many magazines, newspapers and online. Her editorial clients are published widely, including the New York Times and the London Times Literary Supplement.

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I think I have exposed what attributes chapapote has as a painting medium on paper and hardboard and displayed some suitable examples in this book. I am now considering ‘moving on.’ It has been fun and a challenge to engage with a material that seemed to have no artistic value whatsoever. In fact, most artists cringe when I say I am using tar in my paintings. That is not to say that there has never been anyone who hasn’t employed tar as a medium.

The difference is that my formula for chapapote does not appear as “black sticky looking tar.” In fact, I contend that the appearance is not black: not the black of charcoal or black oil paint.  If you place my chapapote paintings alongside a sample of black, as on the painting chart, you immediately see that it is not black! It leans more to a deep chocolate brown. I add paints to the natural chapapote as I mix it also as I apply it as I paint. It is changed from its natural color altered
by the admixture of paint and enhanced by my Sal-Zar Medium.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter at all! What I have done is take a natural element found in Mexico and use it as a medium in my art. I don’t believe that I need go on any more than say that it has served me well; it is certainly a ‘signature’ medium and makes my art with chapapote unique and collectible. If I go on further in my paintings with chapapote it will be to continue to call attention to it as a petrochemical and to our addiction to oil and the tragedy of the addiction and how it contributes to worldwide pollution: a threat to life on “spaceship earth.”

All my life I always looked at the sky and would remark, what a beautiful blue it was. I never knew that it isn’t blue at all, but violet; as humans we can’t see violet as a color and we see it as blue. Maybe I see chapapote as not black, in the same way as I see the sky as blue.

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