OSWALD SAENZ

"As an artist, I am perfect. I use pencil, markers, paint and pastel to create houses, flowers, animals, people that come from my imagination. Sometimes I stay up all night working on a piece. The ideas come from in my head. My dream is to be big and rich." -Oswald Saenz

Oswald Saenz was Summertime’s Artist in Residence from June through August of 2021. Oswald is a Colombian born artist based in Jackson Heights, Queens and a member of YAI Arts, a nonprofit studio for artists with disabilities based in NYC. Utopian jungles, spiky and sentient flowers, teetering houses that defy geometry, flora and fauna as voracious as they are delectable — these are the subjects of Oswald's bold and colorful drawings. His fluid and fearless lines seem to flow directly from Oswald's subconscious. They are overgrown, hypnotic, silly, and strange.

A night owl, Oswald spends late nights and early mornings drawing places he has never been, full of rainbow vines, cottages, hybrid birds and rainbows. His visionary visual language evokes freedom, abundance, and the wild terrain of the creative mind. In 2019, Oswald was commissioned to co-design the mural that now hangs in YAI Headquarters. His work has been exhibited in Flux Factory and Eleven36. 

Oswald’s residency at Summertime culminated in his first solo exhibition, Deborah, on view at Summertime from September 10 - October 1, 2021. The exhibition was dedicated to Deborah Botero, 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.

The time in which Saenz was Summertime’s artist in residence, was 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.

During his residency, Oswald Saenz was also introduced to Summertime friend and illustrator Dave Ercolini where they collaborated on a series of animations to bring his original characters to life.

Dave and Oswald worked together — over many a ham sandwich — at Summertime and Oswald's Jackson Heights apartment. With an elaborate set up of multiple screens and extension cords, Oswald's figures began to dance. Dave recollected, “For people who draw, there’s something exciting about seeing your pictures come to life. There’s a magic to it. We have fun and that spirit is in the work we’ve made together.”

The two have become thick as thieves, checking in over Facetime and inspiring new avenues in one another’s work. According to Oswald, “Dave is family!” Dave describes a deep appreciation for Oswald, particularly in, “the naturalness of the way he draws — there’s a fluidity to it. You can read and feel the confidence. It’s a flow.”