Santiago - Digital Painter

Latin house fusion pumps relentlessly, multi-cultural couples fill the dance floor, which in the cozy nether regions of Williamsburg’s Bembe extends wall to wall. Two young Latinas excitedly discuss a young unassuming man in a fedora and lightly tinted a brown glasses, who is speaking with their male friend. “That’s Santiago, the artist on MySpace”, the taller one leans down and breathily yells into her friends hair, clearly believing herself to be in the presence of someone worthy of her exuberance. “Really?!”, her companion squeals, “Oh my God, he’s amazing!” Their excitement is justified. Upon witnessing the passionate, color saturated visual outpourings that are posted internet wide for his global audience; surprise and awe are usually the instant sensations. Known for his extreme exercises in creativity and highly distinctive style of digital painting, very few would recognize him due to the fact his internet profiles bear only one or two photos of him and hundreds of eye-popping, mind bending beautiful images.

Born in the Bronx, as a teen he entered New York City’s High School of Art and Design, where the artsy misfits find themselves amongst a myriad of peers that compliment and neutralize the feeling that they are indeed “different”. He went on to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts at the world renowned Fashion Institute of Technology.

One of his most noteworthy and concentrated projects involves his creating 30 images in 30 days. It is a grueling exercise in tapping into his creative spirit that seems endlessly accessible. Summer ’08 proved to be the summer of a Latina Pin-up heat wave that he posted daily on MySpace, Behance and Flickr, he called “30 Days of Heat”. Through the advent of social networking, art has reached people by way of friend request. Santiago’s work was noticed and before he knew it, more than 11,000 people knew who he was, with hundreds regularly leaving comments on his pics, which in his case were never of himself but of his recent works or political outcries.

Having learned of Facebook’s global reach and the vast art community networking through the newer site, Santiago’s friend list grew again in a flash and in it were beauties across the world that pumped his always searching mind with the inspiration for the new 30 Days project. A proponent of “cultural mash-ups” he whimsically plays with portraiture that often combines the women with touches that distinctly represent another culture altogether. To give us a blonde blue eyed girl from Sweden would be expected, mundane even, something he could never be. Gorgeous Imane from France, with her light caramel complexion isn’t what most would expect to find as the representative of her country, but there she is, enticing a Chinese dragon to bite into a particularly bitter-sweet lollipop. Sou Sou of Kuwait wears a wrap, her eyes blaze and wait…are those space invaders that make up the hounds tooth pattern?! Just when you think that you know what kind of surprise is going to greet you, you log on and brace yourself to see the next gorgeous face to find the representatives of Antarctica smiling coyly back at you in the form of two lovely penguins, Penny and Gwinny. Pure genius, always fun and visually fulfilling, hopefully, Santiago’s works will soon be spilling out of the interwebs and into a gallery near you.

written during the Muse project for the New York Optimist