Connected
What home means to Oswald Saenz.
Professional artist, brother, uncle, son. These are just a few words Oswald Saenz uses to describe himself. Saenz says drawing has always been his best form of self-expression. Throughout the years, Oswald’s family has been a focal point of his art. Saenz moved from Medellin, Colombia to Jackson Heights, Queens in 1979. Forty-four years later, he comfortably considers himself a New Yorker.
Saenz draws when inspiration strikes, and says that his creativity springs from his life and family. Saenz uses vivid, saturated colors to create abstract faces and figures that represent his aunts, uncles, parents and other members. Entangled vines and foliage are also common subjects of his work.
“Sometimes I just fall asleep,” Saenz says. “Then I get up and think, ‘Hey, I got this idea. Let me put it on the table.’”
As a child, Saenz used to draw inside the small borders of matchboxes, filling the pale cardboard insides with swirls of bright geometric patterns. Today, his large, poster-size drawings hang on the walls of Summertime, YAI and more galleries to come.
Summertime is a non-profit art studio and gallery located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Its mission is to create a space where artists who identify as neurodivergent or have intellectual disabilities can create and show their work with support and mentorship.
In his newest collection, Dinner’s Ready, Saenz depicted the family members who make him feel the most at home.
The exhibit ran from March 24 to April 30 and displayed the work of 13 different artists. In the center of the gallery, a large dinner table overflowed with papier-mâché food items including frosted cakes, cobs of corn, and a lobster. The walls were decorated with paintings, shelves holding sculptures, family photos, and drawings.
Saenz’s favorite mediums are colored pencils and magic markers, and he prefers colors rich with depth. He says, “I like the bright colors, they give it shine and life.”
Dinner’s Ready is Saenz’s second exhibit with Summertime. His first residency with the gallery was in September of 2021. That exhibit was called Deborah, in honor of his late mother, who passed away due to complications from COVID.
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Saenz says his mother is the inspiration for most of his work. And he uses his art as a way to remember her. “She was 78 years old,” he recalls. “She was happy. She liked to dance. She liked to see me happy.”
True to his style, Saenz’s pieces of his mother are abstract and bright. Throughout the collection, his mother is drawn in black and white, with bright colors swirling around her.
Saenz says he isn’t sure why he decided to draw her that way, but that it felt right. He describes most of his creative process as intuition. When asked to explain specific pieces, Saenz often responds, “I just thought of it. It came from here,” while tapping a finger to his temple.
Saenz says he knows that his desire to constantly grow, improve and explore his art is rooted in his cultural background as a proud Colombian.
Saenz says that he feels happy when he has completed a drawing because he can see the growth in his own skills. “There is something in my soul, saying that I can do a better job every day,” he says. “Much better every day.”
Joy radiates from Saenz when he talks about his art. It’s the same joy that shows when he describes the way his nieces and nephews throw their arms around his neck whenever he sees them. Art and family are deeply intertwined for Saenz.
And there are exciting things on the horizon. One of the projects he is currently working on includes his first commissioned piece. A visitor who saw his work at Summertime reached out to him and asked him to create a drawing of two angels.
Saenz says he has been given full creative freedom with the commission and is excited to finish it. It’s an important opportunity both artistically, and financially.
Despite having just wrapped up the show he was a part of at Summertime, Saenz has already completed another set of works for an upcoming exhibit hosted at The Standard Plaza by the Fashion Institute of Technology.
The theme for the show is “Senses. Appearance. Essence. Existence.” In honor of this, Saenz has created drawings that explore new subjects such as space, planets, stars — and most excitingly, martians.
