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Sage Santiago
My name is Sage Santiago, and I’m a multidisciplinary artist from Limerick, Pennsylvania. Right now, I’m in a place on my creative path where I’m turning inward—looking to the past, feeling all the big feelings. No matter the medium; painting, sculpture, writing, or mixed media, I use whatever materials are available to me, ensuring that nothing gets in the way of fully expressing what I need to say.
For me, art is a way to honor my experiences—to give them space, form, and voice. Each piece reflects something real I’ve lived through or felt deeply. My hope is that when others see my work, they connect with it in their own way.
If even one person feels seen, understood, or just a little less alone because of what I’ve created, then I know I’m doing something right.
Shame and Punishment
Shame and Punishment is a portrait of the soul worn thin by years of hiding. It speaks of the quiet agony of masking. Folding myself into shapes that weren’t mine, simply to survive in a world that offered no refuge for my truth. I learned early that my joy was too much, my grief too strange, my way of being, wrong. The glances of others that were full of judgment and confusion, became mirrors that taught me to change and shove myself into a more “acceptable” way of being. I thought the only way to be safe was to erase myself. So, I did. Although, the box I’d squeezed into couldn’t hold me forever. Cracks formed, and I spilled out, messy, loud and unfiltered. Still, I held to the feeling that I was not “acceptable” or “digestible’ for the world to accept me. So, I patched those cracks the only way I knew how: with pain, with silence, with the suppression of everything bright and natural within me that longed to be free. This painting is the aftermath. A visual echo of what it means to live unseen, punished simply for being. It is a tribute to the self I silenced, and a raw reflection on the shame imposed by a world that punishes being different.
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas with paper mache, nails, plastic bag and press on nails.
Isolation
Isolation is a visual echo of the words and lessons I absorbed growing up. Quiet commands that taught me to shrink, to disappear not only in spirit, but in body. I learned to retreat, to hide myself away, until my room became both sanctuary and prison. There, beneath the silence, a storm brewed—a heavy fog of depression and self-loathing that clung to me for years. Looking into this window, I see the child I was, radiant, creative, full of love. And my heart breaks for her, for the way she turned that light inward and burned herself with it, convinced she was unworthy of being seen, understood, or cherished. That instinct to vanish didn’t disappear. Even now, the habit of isolation lingers. I still find it hard to step outside, to let myself be witnessed, to believe that simply existing in the world is enough.
Acrylic and Oil on canvas with fake blood, scrap fabric, marker, decor barbed wire.
Night Terrors
Night Terrors captures the brutal yet solitary battle I’ve fought and continue to fight against the traumas in my life that find their way into my bed. I wake up, my heart pounding. I’m frozen. Aware but unable to move, as if some invisible force is sitting on my chest. Sometimes I see a figure standing near my bed, watching. I know it’s not real, but in the moment, it doesn’t matter. The fear is real. This torment only got more intense as I withdrew from the substances I once used to escape. The process of cleansing became its own kind of hell, one that magnified the fear and anxiety that already lived inside me. These nights bleed into my days, leaving behind a quiet terror. If you see yourself in this, please know you're not alone. I wish you sleep untouched by fear.
Upcycled Clock, Oil, Silk Flowers, Fake Blood
