We’d love to hear from you — whether you have a project in mind, or just want to say hi.
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SAGEN
Role
Founder and Creative Director overseeing concept, research, art direction, and a team of artists
Scope
Original hand-drawn commissions, limited editions, licensed estate editions, and open prints, plus the brand and go-to-market
Impact
Built the world's first life-story art gallery, and a body of work trusted by notable figures across music, business, and entertainment
Recognition
Clients and subjects include H.E.R., Gary Vaynerchuck, Jesse Itzler, Sara Blakely, the David Bowie estate, Richard Branson, MrBeast, and the Bruce Lee Foundation
Challenge: Most people's legacies and stories aren't told in a way that's creative, unique to them, and showcases the full details of their life. Sagen was created to fix exactly that: take an extraordinary life and turn it into a single canvas that depicts the entire life story of who someone is, what they've been through, and a visual identity that encompasses who they really are.
Idea: Create the world's first gallery built entirely around life story art, treating every piece like a brand identity for a person: deep research, one core insight, and obsessive attention to the details that make it unmistakably them. I direct each piece from concept to finished canvas, leading a team of artists to help execute each piece. Fittingly, it started with music. The first two pieces ever made, back in 2021, were H.E.R. and Pop Smoke, and musicians are still my favorite subjects to this day.
Result: A studio turned gallery trusted by some of the most recognizable people in music, business, and culture. Most of the work is private and commissioned, so only a handful is ever shown publicly, but the names behind the curtain, from H.E.R. and Pop Smoke to Gary Vaynerchuk, Richard Branson, and Sara Blakely to name a few.
Every life story is a creative design challenge
The hardest part is never creating the actual painting, it's the research, deep insight into each subject, and active listening that showcases each client's individuality and overall vibe. Before touching any composition, I go deep on a person, their milestones, their turning points, the tiny details only they would recognize, hunting for the key insights that make the pieces so personal to the subject that they can hang it proudly in their home. The real balancing act that makes each piece special is creating something that reads as art when you step back while also informing and rewarding the viewer with dozens oftrue, specific details of each subject. Too little and it's a pretty picture with no soul. Too much and it's essentially an infographic. Getting a life to feel like real art that's true to them instead of just a graphic is the entire craft, and it's the same approach and instinct I bring to any brand I work on.
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Limited edition exclusives
The limited editions are where the storytelling gets a little obsessive. The edition size is never random, it's pulled from the subject's own life. Vincent van Gogh's run is 37 pieces, because he died at 37. Details like that are invisible until someone notices, and it speaks deeply to admirers of the subjects. For the modern icons, I work directly with estates to license their stories and do them justice, from the Bruce Lee Foundation to David Bowie's (work in progress), so each edition is both authentic and authorized.
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Private commissions for public figures
Most of what I make at Sagen never goes online (with some being okay with displaying their pieces). These are private commissions for entrepreneurs, celebrities, and families who want their story, or that of someone they love, turned into a single, beautifully personalized piece. Every one starts with real research and a hunt for the detail that unlocks it. For example, on Jesse Itzler's piece, the timeline runs in black and white and then bursts into color right after a private jet, because he once told a story about stepping onto that jet in his twenties and watching his whole life go from black-and-white to color. I built a major part of that composition just around that one line. He liked the result enough to commission a second piece for his wife, Sara, as an anniversary gift, and then another one of Sara's entire life story. Gary Vaynerchuk's now hangs in his office. That's the whole job: find the truest thing about a person, and make it impossible to forget.
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Have a project in mind?
We’d love to hear from you — whether you have a project in mind, or just want to say hi.
Let’s Talk
