DEBORAH

Deborah Botero is Oswald Newman Saenz’s mother — a glamorous, impassioned woman who loved roses and Chinese food and cared fiercely for her son. On January 17, 2021, Deborah passed away from complications of Covid.

Saenz was Summertime’s artist in residence in June - August, a period of mourning and discovery as he navigated the world without his primary protector and advocate. Yet Saenz connects with his mother through late nights and early mornings hunched over his drawing pad in the overgrown wilds of his imagination. Saenz feels her presence like he feels the wind blowing. She tells him to take care of himself and to be careful in the street.

In Saenz’s drawings, filmy graphite figures coalesce like phantoms among gnarled vines and flower patches rippling with the rhythm of ocean waves. Humans and angels fluidly transmute from one state to the other, suggesting a porous boundary between earthly and spiritual embodiment. Domed cathedrals and wolf-birds mark a recognizable world made strange by the rupture of loss and the welcoming of the incorporeal. For Saenz, the natural and supernatural are close kin, blossoming in the mind’s eye as well as the external world.

At the end of his residency, Saenz returned home to Colombia for Deborah’s memorial service. This exhibition, too, is a memorial, a howl of grief, a conjuring of spirit, and a testament to the love between a mother and son.

“Rest in peace. From your son Oswald.”