Statement of Miguel Grijalva

Painting has long been a means through which I explore my cultural origins. As a Mexican American, I have always been surrounded by Latin Music. When I was very young, my parents introduced me to Norteñas, Tex-Mex, Polka, Trios, Boleros, Romanticos, Flamenco, Tango, Salsa, and especially Rancheras. Then I think of Rancheras, I think of the Mariachi. There is a mystery in the spirit of the Mariachi that is so strong that in it one can feel the history, bloodshed, and romance of the Mexican people: trumpets firing notes like rifles; strumming guitars echoing the hoofs of rebel horses.

I started my series Tradicional in 2004 after I dreamt that I was painting a Mariachi trumpeter playing with such passion that you could hear the trumpet echoing out of the painting. That dream was the very inspiration for Noche Obscura. Ever since then, I have been attempting to push the limits of the realistic form, line, and color to expose the rigors that musicians and artists alike must endure in order to demonstrate even the simplest and purest of ideas.

For me, music and painting are nearly inseparable arts. Sounds, themselves, possess color and form, which in turn exude their own song. The otherworldliness that engulfs me when I listen to Mexican folk music has helped me realize the innate need of an object, person, or experience to express its very essence in an exultation of color, light, and texture, such that our daily human senses cannot perceive. At first, the music elicits simple emotional responses, but soon, it blossoms into simultaneously existential and holistic visual experience-incredible and full of magic.

Eventually, the inspired imagination bends that experience and all its accompanying lines and colors to the breaking point as if it were an ironic discovery on an exploration of tradition and realism. It is on the threshold of this discovery that one can identify and receive the spirit of my art.