Above the pt.2 gallery space on Oakland’s Webster Street, artists of all mediums work away in private studios. While musicians like Ovrkast and Demahjiae make new sounds, artists like Landon Pointer and Esteban Raheem Abdul Raheem Samayoa prepare art for upcoming shows.
On one side of Samayoa’s studio, big, mural-like canvases layered with black charcoal and white airbrush paint stand as tall as the artist. His first solo show in a year, Ain’t No Dogs In Heaven, opens downstairs at pt.2 on Aug. 5 in three different rooms that represent three distinct chapters of his life: Pops, Esteban Samayoa and Raheem Abdul Raheem.
The show will start with black-and-white imagery from Samayoa’s childhood in Sacramento, the next room will reference the inspiration he found in his Latino culture, and the last space will document his journey to the Islamic faith. It’s an ambitious presentation for the 29-year-old artist, representing months of work and spanning over a dozen paintings and sculptures, many of them large-scale.
Samayoa, who grew up in a Mexican and Guatemalan household, and attended mosque with friends and neighbors, was always drawn to art. His mom told him he was drawing at the age of three — and not the normal stick figures with a sun in the corner of the page. “She was like, ‘You understood the concept of how a figure looks like, how people look, how cars look. And you were drawing that at a young age,’” he says. “That has always stuck with me.”
Imagery from his Sacramento days shows up throughout his work. Dogs are a constant motif; some of his first drawings depicted Slick Wolf from the old Tex Avery cartoons. Like his father and grandfather — who drove classic Cadillacs — the wolf drove nice cars. As he got older, Samayoa saw himself in dogs like the Doberman and rottweiler breeds, which have connotations of being dangerous. With tattoos on his face and hands, people can initially judge him as a threat, but just like the dogs he grew up with, he’s the opposite: a soft-spoken, kind person.
Samayoa moved to Oakland from Sacramento in 2018, taking the leap to being a full-time artist with the hopes of making a living off his art. That two-hour distance from home created the space to grow his confidence in both himself and his work. Showing at places like Swim Gallery and Good Mother Gallery, he began to build an artistic network. He was gaining momentum — and then the pandemic hit.
For many, including Samayoa, the pandemic meant more time at home, but also more time to dedicate to his craft. And that extra $600 Gavin Newsom was giving out was unmatched. Samayoa used his time and money to further develop his “Pops”-era style: airbrushed black-and-white imagery that looks like it could live on a big T-shirt back in the early 2000s.
When he works with charcoal on raw canvas surfaces, Samayoa’s labor is evident. “It’s kind of painterly because I lay it on pretty thick, and I have to blend it with a rag or paper towel to really get it in the fibers of the cloth,” he says. “I knew I was a natural with charcoal, and I just ran with that.”
That assurance is hard-won. Though his shows at Good Mother and Swim Gallery went well, he sold nothing out of a later group show at pt.2. It was a blow to his confidence as an artist, and he took a step back from showing his work.
“I was like, ‘Yo, maybe I’m not who I thought I was right now,’” he says. “But at the same time, I’m like, ‘Oh, every artist goes through this.’ I really need to sit down and focus on my practice and what’s important.”
Taking that time to recenter, he saw that he wanted to tell his audiences a more complete story of his life. In the “Esteban” section of Ain’t No Dogs In Heaven, his oil and oil pastel paintings reflect on his Mexican and Guatemalan background — and show him branching out from black and white for the first time. “These color works, it’s kind of me just exploring my heritage from a new perspective,” he says. In the show’s final section, made up of cast prayer rugs and other installation elements, audiences will get a sense of where he is now, after his conversation to Islam.
Moving through the show, Samayoa’s artworks will lead viewers through both the constants of his life and the different stages of his experiences: dealing with the realities of having two absent parents, his love for dogs, the cars he saw his dad drive, and his new sense of self as Raheem Abdul Raheem.
At this point, Samayoa feels like he has finally exited survival mode. Like everyone, he says, he has made mistakes in the past that made him think, “Maybe I’m not going to heaven.” But with Ain’t No Dogs In Heaven, Samayoa has gained a sense of freedom in his life. Art is his end goal, but at the same time, he wants his work to reach people who might not see themselves in gallery spaces — people who look like him and come from his various communities.
“I just want this show to inspire other people,” he says. “I just want to do as much talking about it because I think it’s important, the mental state of our community. That is what this show is, the growth that we all have within ourselves.”
‘Ain’t No Dogs In Heaven’ is on view at pt.2 gallery (1523b Webster St., Oakland) Aug. 5–Sept. 9, 2023.