Take a journey into Mexico's traditional Mariachis, painted in an exultation of light and color. Artist Miguel Grijalva uses a variety of spanish music as an inspiration that creates visions better known as symbols in the imagination that represent life that exists in a culture where color has no limits. "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 percieve." Born in Phoenix Arizona, Miguel has spent his early years in southern Arizona, primarily in the Tucson area. Raised with a pencil in his hand and a sketch pad in the other, Miguel's inspiration is music and it has played a significant role in his paintings. The artist, also musician, has developed a way of transfering ideas streight from the acoustic guitar, on to the canvas. " For me music and painting are nearly inseperable arts. Sounds themselves posses color and form, which in turn exude their own song. At first the music elicits emotional responces, but it soon blossoms into simultaneously existencial and holistic visual experience-incredible and magical. Eventually, the inspired imagination bends that experience and its acompanying lines and colors to the braking point as if it were an ironic discovery of 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." Miguels artwork romanticizes the mystery of the Mariachi, the rythm of Flamenco, and the tranquility of rural Mexican life. In addition to his oil paintings, Miguel has been working as a freelance artist for 8 years painting portraits, murals, and designing logos. His artwork adorns a 156-foot long wall at the Jewish Community Center, a 56-foot long balcony, and eighteen other residential and professional buildings.