(Image: Painting by Salazar)
(Biddeford, ME) Action Landscape & Compelling Visions, a dual show of Salazar, opens on Friday, September 28th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm, corresponding with the monthly Biddeford Art Walk. A very unusual application of chapapote (tar) and resins are used in this work on Stonehenge paper displayed in Maine for the first time. Salazar (Roland Rose) has resettled in Maine after a twenty year artistic residency in Mexico. It’s a show worth marking your calendar as a “must see.”
He explains: “I’m a visual artist by choice and dedication. My art is about values. To live and work in Mexico has been both a privilege and a challenge. It has resulted in the Mexico Years inspired by an atmosphere there that has helped me shape my art and has allowed my inner values to emerge.”
Salazar is remembered as the founder of the Maine Artists’ Space Danforth Gallery, which was one of the first alternative artists’ non-profit galleries in Portland. This is Salazar’s first show in Maine in a number of years, displaying a selection of art he created in Mexico, and never shown in the U.S. The show will introduce Salazar to the growing arts community of Southern Maine.
The artist expresses why he called this series of paintings Landscape in Action: “I have created many landscape impressions during my twenty year residency in Mexico, seeking an artistic pathway through the Sierra Madre Oriental Hills where I lived, in the town of San Miguel de Allende. The ‘Action Painting’ series of landscapes in this show reaches for the ‘soul’ of Mexico without superfluities; it addresses how much these years in Mexico have meant to me personally, and how my painting residency there, influenced my oeuvre. The paintings on Stonehenge paper are technically unique; it displays the use of spray enamels in my Sal-Zar Medium.”
“Compelling Visions,” he explains, “is a distinct body-of-work. Although, ‘figurative’ it also includes ‘New Realism’ concepts as it uses flattened space and simplified color. However, I am not motivated entirely how things look in this work. I am interested in the series as a psychic probing of my own inner-self. This is why the series is best called Compelling Visions. A snapshot of my inner-mind, and the vertical images in the hand crafted Mexican tin frames that I showed many of these in, evoke a daunting sense of my inner world.”
About Salazar
Salazar received his studio art experience in Paris at Ecole Superieur des Beaux Arts and at the in New National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, both in NYC. His work has been shown in exhibitions worldwide, and is included in permanent collections at the Instituto Mexicano-Nortearericano de Relationes Culturales, AC, Mexico City and The Portland Museum of Art, among others. He is represented in México by Aura Galería, México, D.F; Vértice Galería, Guadalajara; in Paris, France and Milan, Italy; as well as in several galleries in the United States.
As an author he has published nine electronic art books (http:www.e-artbooks.com) and was recently published in Mexico: Solament En San Miguel, (Anthology, 2010). In addition, a memoir, My Father’s Room, will be released on Amazon at the end of the year.
Videos and DVDs about Salazar have been produced and distributed to the educational community and general public in the United States by Chip Taylor Productions. E-ditions (Canada) re-published his CD: “Gods, Land & People of México;” Salazar’s Ten-Year Retrospective at the Diego Rivera Museum, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Salazar's studio is located at 265 Main Street in Biddeford, Studio 2. The studio is on the 3rd floor and there is an elevator available. For more information or to make an appointment to see Salazar's work, please call 207-869-0999.
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