(Thumbnail photo in the menu page by Faye Sadou )

Mauricio Saravia, a Uruguayan multimedia artist who was living in Los Angeles, California, during his last years, has been described by the critics as a passionate creator. Each piece of his work takes us to his inner world, rich and complex. Study one of his paintings, and you will deeply feel his emotions. His upcoming poetry publications are overflowing with his personal concern about social injustice, love and humanity.

You could say that Saravia was born with a pencil in his hand. When he was two, he began to draw on every available wall in the house. His behavior became less toddler-typical when, at the tender age of five, he forsook Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose, and instead spent hours looking through art books of the works of Picasso, Dali, Velasquez and Monet. A friend of his father’s would often come to the house to paint, and young Mauricio would watch in captivation as he would stretch a large canvas across the floor, and proceed to reproduce any of the exquisite works of the masters. Art filled the family’s home in Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo.

At eighteen, Saravia discovered that he was a painter himself, when he traded in his character-sketching pencil and charcoal for the stroke of the brush. After a first try with oils, he found his natural place in acrylics, which he felt “allowed me to express myself better.” As he continued to fine tune his niche, portraits and realism began to give way to surrealistic images. He eased into works that were abstract and bold in nature, establishing a style that was entirely his own and has yet to be categorized. He once said of his work, “Abstract creations had always fascinated me because I feel that I can express my soul and mind without thinking of concepts, like your mind letting go of the steering wheel.” These metaphysical works, from the dark and brooding to the wildly energetic, remained Saravia’s focus throughout his career, regularly garnering great interest from the public, art collectors, and fellow artists alike.

Mauricio Saravia suffered his entire life from a rare medical condition which finally took his life on December 12, 2008. He was 39.

Marisa, you are Mauricio’s mother. I’m sure readers will join me in extending my sympathy for your loss. We are going to focus today not on Mauricio’s illness, but instead on his life and his art.
But to begin, I want to ask you about that mysterious mother-child connection, a phenomenon all its own. When Mauricio was born, he appeared to be perfectly healthy and normal. Yet you knew, without anyone telling you, that something was wrong. Tell us about that.
Thank you, Jennifer! There is some kind of perception that mothers have that goes beyond any understanding. Most doctors, as scientific professionals, don’t believe in that. When I went to doctors telling them, “I feel that there is something wrong with my son,” they laughed at me and they showed me test results showing that everything was normal. They said he was cute and smart. The McCune-Albright condition was not showing yet because he was little, but he was already feeling discomfort and pain inside his body and he let me know. I insisted with different doctors from when he was age two to five, until I found one pediatrician, Dr. Mario Goldaracena, in Uruguay, who listened to me and did the necessary investigation.