Sagen.Life

Directions Website Contact the museum

The only art gallery capturing entire life stories on a single canvas. Hand-drawn limited editions, prints, & private commissions. www.sagen.life

08/31/2026

A few close-ups of some of our location life story prints featuring Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and London.

Each one features key years of iconic buildings, moments, and institutions from each, drawn as a timeline or map of the city’s historical story.

Get 15% off your first open edition print with code “welcome15” 🌆

08/09/2026

Vincent van Gogh sold almost nothing in his lifetime and died sure he had failed at the one thing he cared about most... but he was wrong in the most beautiful way a person can be wrong. What felt like a wasted life to him became one of the most beloved in the history of art.

This unique artwork traces some of the most important moments, milestones, and memories of Vincent’s life - now available as a limited run of 37 signed and numbered prints, one for every year he lived on this earth. He never got to know he was truly loved.... so the least we can do is not forget him.

Shop Vincent van Gogh: Starlight and Persistence through the link in bio. Once all 37 are gone, they are gone forever.

08/05/2026

The actress Hollywood called “the most beautiful woman in the world” was also a brilliant inventor who helped create the backbone of much of the advanced technology we use today.

During WWII, Hedy Lamarr co-created a frequency-hopping “secret communications system” to guide torpedoes past enemy jamming, an idea inspired by mapping piano keys to radio channels.

The Navy rejected it, seized her patent, and told her to sell war bonds with her looks instead. Yet decades later that same invention ended up in the Navy’s own hands without proper credit to her, and it eventually became the foundation of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. She was never paid a cent for it…

Her story stuck with me, not only as an immigrant and entrepreneur but because it shows how real brilliance can go unseen when the world judges someone only by their appearance, gender, or background. I was so moved by it that I created this biographical portrait based on her life.

You can read about the details and inspiration behind the art piece on Sagen’s website through the link in bio, where it’s also available as an open edition print.

She never got her recognition in time, but her genius is all around us now. I think the least we can do today is remember her name and give her the credit she deserves.

— Chris

Clip credits: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (BBC)

07/28/2026

130 years ago today, on July 28, 1896, Miami was officially incorporated as a city. 🌇

It grew from a few hundred residents into a place where music, movement, art, and reinvention collide, where the (Miami) Heat holds ambition and the skyline keeps rising to meet it.

Sagen was at the Miami The Superfair art show in March 2022, where these city life story pieces debuted (see last video) and now available as open edition prints, with options for your choice of size, finish, and framing.

Our Miami pieces trace the figures who gave this city its rhythm and its legend, with every lively chapter of its life woven into one canvas; reflecting its history with dozens of iconic landmarks, quirky characters, and interesting milestone stories within each piece.

Both pieces took about 40 hours each to create over a period of 5 months by independent artists James Autor and Russel Helix. Explore the collection and learn more about the stories behind both on Sagen.Life.

Happy 130th, Miami! 🌴☀️

07/26/2026

Before the NFL, Friday After Next, White Chicks, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and a decade of Old Spice, Terry Crews was (and still is) an incredibly talented ARTIST 🎨.

Every time life knocked him down, Terry reached for a pencil and channeled his creativity through drawing, backed by his endless resilience and optimism. His story reminds us that we don’t have to be just ONE thing to leave a mark, and that reaching for our creativity is something that can keep us going when times get tough.

Inspired by his journey, artist Emily Aponte sketched Terry’s life story across different parts of Caracas and brought it together into one cohesive piece, highlighting the parts people don’t hear about as often: a kid drawing superheroes at the kitchen table to escape the chaos at home, a young man painting his teammates’ portraits in the locker room so his family could eat, a factory floor sweeper in LA who kept designing furniture and book covers until the awards finally caught up.

Even across different countries, art is one of those things that will always connect us, and just like Terry, it’s something we can always come back to no matter what’s happening in life.

This piece is not for sale. Just a way of honoring someone we admire who keeps starting over the same way every artist does, with a blank page and no idea where it will go.

Thank you Terry Crews for inspiring us through your creativity and love of art, film, and music, and of course for making us laugh along the way :) we appreciate you! 🙏

- Emily & Chris

PS. This video was filmed before June 24th, when the catastrophic double earthquake struck Venezuela, leaving thousands homeless and tragically claiming many lives. It’s been hard to find a way to post this while staying sensitive to what the region is going through. There’s a donation link in b1o to an organization we believe in (Cáritas Venezuela) that’s truly helping Venezuelans get back on their feet. Please consider giving, every bit helps.

07/24/2026

What I learned diving into some of Vincent van Gogh’s pieces at The Art Institute of Chicago 👉

It was my 3rd time in the Windy City but my first time visiting the Art Institute. Some of the things I learned about his pieces were surprising…

But first, some context: The Art Institute of Chicago holds one of the strongest Van Gogh groupings outside Europe, spanning nearly his entire mature career from the pointillist experiments of Paris in 1887 through the Arles portraits and the asylum years at Saint-Rémy.

Its anchor is the second version of The Bedroom, which the museum brought together with the Amsterdam and Paris versions in 2016 for the first and only time in North America.

Much of the collection came through two great Chicago gifts, the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection and the Joseph Winterbotham Collection, and the works are hung together rather than by donor, so you can stand in one room and watch him move from Paris to Arles to the asylum.

But one of Vincent’s most iconic pieces is one of his smallest...

Self-Portrait (1887, Paris)

* This portrait actually isn’t on canvas at all… it’s painted on a prepared artist’s board (which is why it’s so small). It was kind of like he was testing something with this piece rather than making a big statement creating his own portrait (which I think is even cooler).

* He made at least 24 self-portraits during his two years in Paris, which is most of the roughly 35 he ever painted, and he did it largely because he could not afford to pay models. So in a way, the most recognizable face in modern art actually began as a workaround for being broke.

* The stippled dots come from Seurat and Signac, whose Neo-Impressionism he’d just encountered at the time. But he never fully converted: instead of even dots, the strokes radiate outward from his head like a halo of energy.

The Bedroom (1889, Saint-Rémy)

* This is the second of three, and he painted it inside the asylum at Saint-Rémy from an original that had taken serious water damage in a flood at Arles, which makes it a picture of home built from a ruined picture of home by a man who no longer had one…

* The walls seen here were actually never blue.

07/20/2026

Bashar would’ve been 27 today… had to honor him the right way 🕊️. Thank you for leaving an unforgettable legacy, Pop.

Made this video in 2021 but never posted it on here…

Woo forever 🙏

Artwork by .d for Sagen

07/19/2026

Entire life stories depicted on a single canvas, hand-drawn by select independent artists. Limited edition series available now:

Mother Teresa: A Life of Service by Ronald William

Vincent van Gogh: Starlight and Persistence by Hajar Benchikh

David Bowie: A Life In Fragments by Jorge Cortes

Pop Smoke: The Woo Legacy by Ellis Lewis-Dragstra

Teresa Carreño: Valkyrie of the Piano by Emily Aponte

07/13/2026

On this day in 1923, a real estate ad went up in the hills above Los Angeles - a billboard that spelled out “HOLLYWOODLAND” in letters as tall as a house, with the goal of selling lots in the hills to anyone who wanted to buy a piece of the dream that is LA.

The “LAND” fell off the sign in 1949 and nobody put it back. Then, somehow, this ad became the most famous nine letters in the world and a timeless symbol of LA history.

I’ve lived 18 years in Los Angeles, starting in 2008. I feel like this story is kind of representative of LA: you show up to the city as one person and then it transforms you over time, especially creatively, while shedding certain parts of you to become someone who ends up feeling like anything is possible.

It’s also a little rough around the edges.. a little too much sun, a little too whacky, and always mid-reinvention. The three original art piece pieces highlighted in this carousel are our attempt to capture the city’s history on one canvas. And if you look closely, the sign is showcased as an important part of the city’s life story in every one of them.

Each one is available as an open edition print. And because 1923 deserves a nod, use promo code “LA23” for 23% off all 3 LA prints this week only. Our biggest discount yet. Good through July 20 2026, then it disappears (just like the “land” did from the billboard).

Swipe to see me holding a couple of the pieces when first printed, still proudly up on my wall.

I will always love this city… 🌴☀️

- Chris, Creative Director

07/07/2026

Welcome to Sagen.

We offer original hand-drawn artwork celebrating the people, places, and stories that shape our world (and the ones that define yours).

Address

Los Angeles, CA

Website

http://www.sagen.life/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Sagen.Life posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to Sagen.Life:

Want your museum to be the top-listed museum in Los Angeles?