George Thaddeus Saj: Memories
Mixed media portraits
A collagist working from a pile of materials –– wood, discarded surgical instruments and household furnishings –– that he collects, George Thaddeus Saj repurposes them from their original benign contexts, and casts them into familiar visages of whimsical character and representational specificity. These assemblages are at the same time abstract, figurative, materialist, objective, subjective and disarming. In the end, they create moments of discovery and delight.
Buoyed by a process of discovery as he relates piece to piece, he conceives of and shapes each with eccentric and exceptional character. Like a playwright, Saj plucks notables and stereotypes from the past, sometimes inventing, sometimes reinventing them, all the while endowing his dramatis personae with humor and bonhomie. As an artist, he fulfills his dreams over and over again with every new collage.
Informed by a lifelong commitment to the interplay of human and beastly nature alike, Saj’s associative portraits manifest a deeply historical, cultural and poetic sensibility, and confirm his rigorous perceptual intelligence. The cognizant essence of these works is “finding relationships,” a phenomenological method inherent to both the medical bedside and visual communication that similarly apprise his assemblages.
His curiosity and spunky approach unearth a passion that colors his life every day with pure joy and freedom. Saj enlightens his characters with an array of colors that bring thought and recollection to the mind and soul to the heart. He doesn’t ascribe to traditional mediums or practices, but rather lets his inner artist guide the direction and scope of each piece and its material.
Pablo Picasso strived to sustain the inner child in his art, and Saj’s portraits succeed in Picasso’s aim: they have the freshness of a four-year-old painting her heart out at the easel. Saj’s inner child is alive and well, and the adult has channeled that spirit onto these mixed media works. These fantastic and wonderful heads no doubt amuse adults as much as they enthrall children.
George Thaddeus Saj studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, Dartmouth College, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. Following residency training and service as a staff surgeon at a U.S. Army hospital in Danang, Viet Nam, he settled in New Jersey. In 2004, he retired from his surgical practice, and turned to art full-time. He exhibits his mixed media artworks locally and nationally. Dr. Saj lives and works in Montclair, NJ.
Andrew Horodysky
May 2019