Savage Saffron is so much more than a condiment to spice up the rice. He is fearless and courageous, bold and unwavering in his resolve, but more importantly, he is truly authentic, a one-of-a-kind maverick whose influence on modern popular culture is quite remarkable.

It’s a little-known fact he was the inspiration for The Beatles Yellow Submarine and the less famous, but equally as fabulous rock band Daphne and the Daffodils. Film director Victor Fleming hired Savage Saffron as a consultant for the famed yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s famed film Red Desert’s credits roll over undefined shapes covered in a chocking yellow industrial fog, inspired by none other than Savage Saffron! Vincent Van Gogh was a close friend and when in Arles asked SS to model for the famed sunflower paintings. Sadly, SS never saw a dime from that collaboration, but then again neither did poor Van Gogh!

Nature is indebted to SS from the Blue and Gold Macaw to the Eyelash Viper, Yellow Seahorse, the Banana Slug, Yellow Tang, and American Goldfinch and let’s not forget the inimitable Goldenrod Crab Spider — SS continues to be their undying inspiration. The Sulphur mines near the Kawah Ijen volcano on the island of Java in Indonesia still employ close to 300 miners who face excruciating heat, and toxic fumes in exchange for about five dollars a trip, and yet they continue to risk their lives, entranced by the mesmerizing and seductive shades of yellow they encounter there, sometimes lemony, other times straw colored, but mostly an electrifying saffron!

To say Savage Saffron has lived a life of stupendous and exhilarating beauty would be the understatement of the century, and SS has in fact been around for centuries. Much like Virginia Woolf’s famed character Orlando, Savage Saffron changes with the times, from male to female and back again, forever modulating his/her brightness to suit the the mood of the day.

  • Vincent van Gogh, "The Yellow House," 1888.

  • Claude Monet, "Water Lillies (Yellow and Green)," c. 1920.

  • Pablo Picasso, "Portrait of Dora Maar," 1937.

  • Yayoi Kusama, "Plastic Pumpkin."