Three Faces of Erwan Saunier: Immigrant, Soccer Coach & Artist

On a cold December day in 1999, a French immigrant named Erwan Saunier stepped off a plane in New York City with a work visa, a career in luxury retail, and a belief in the promise of the American dream. What he could have not predicted was that, decades later, he would be known not for haberdashery, but for being a beloved kids soccer coach and an artist acclaimed for his fine oil paintings.

Saunier grew up in Brittany, France. His parents were artists living off the grid in a Cheviot-style home without electricity or running water.

“All the food was grown at home or traded... we fish, we poach, we hunt, we trap,” he recalls, adding he never went to restaurants, watched TV, or went on a vacation as a child. Instead, Saunier developed a deep understanding of the natural world, learned to build a house from the ground up and could identify different plants and animals with ease.

Though his father expected him to follow the family’s artistic path, Saunier was determined to find his own way, including a love affair with soccer. Born with a cleft palette, Saunier was initially banned from playing in local leagues. However, he managed to practice on his own and in games at recess. Eventually, a neighbor noticed his talent and pushed for him to join a team, offering to cover the costs.

Saunier’s determination carried him from small local clubs to semi-professional soccer. At age 23, a knee injury, and what should have routine surgery, went awry. “I tried to move, and my right side wasn’t moving,” he says, explaining that a mishap with anesthesia was to blame. What followed was a 15-month ordeal, including eight months in a wheelchair, relearning how to speak, walk, climb stairs, and even hold a pencil. Saunier’s life in soccer was over.

A New Career, A New City

His next chapter started humbly, in the basement of a Décathlon, France’s giant sports retail chain. He took a part-time job in Paris, working as a stock boy. Then the back-to-school season hit, and the store needed help with sales. He was handed a jacket and sent upstairs.

Within days, the Minister of Sports for Morocco walked in to place a massive order for the country’s soccer federation. The floor manager wasn’t there, so Saunier was given the task. He handled the entire order himself.

His subsequent success on Décathlon’s sales team led to New York, where Saunier arrived on a work visa in 1999 and where he’d open a store on West Broadway in Soho.

“Everything was booming. People were happy. Business was good,” he remembers. Four years later, a break-up with his financial partner set off a fierce legal battle.

“I ended up in the street,” he says. No office, no job, and because his visa was tied to his work, no legal immigration status. His child, Julien, who is now 23, was then two. Saunier had a choice: return to Europe or stay in the U.S. illegally.

He stayed, working for a friend who was a contractor on Fire Island. Saunier eventually secured a green card and, in an effort to heal from the business betrayal, he drifted toward a familiar source of comfort: soccer.

He began taking a ball to the park and training on his own. “Kids started to come around, kick the ball with me,” he says. It happened organically. No flyers, no plan, no fees. It inspired him to offer free soccer classes.

Word spread fast. A local organization hired him as a soccer program director, and that job eventually cleared the path for Saunier to join Manhattan Kickers, an East Side youth league. He came in as an assistant coach and eventually became the program director. The club now has 10 travel teams and a recreational program that serves around 600 kids each year.

Saunier keeps fees low (about $1,800 a year for the travel teams compared to $2,800 and up at competing clubs) and is critical of the commercialization of youth soccer in the U.S. “Soccer is a poor people’s sport,” he says. “You need a ball and a friend.”

Katherine Hochman, whose three children progressed through the Manhattan Kickers, reflects on his coaching impact. “He is much more than simply a soccer coach,” she says. He taught kids “not just how to be great soccer players, but great people.”

Return to the Arts

Though art was always in Saunier’s background, he himself didn’t pick up a brush until much later. Indeed, his father, who had long dismissed oil painting as boring, had a change of heart near the end of his life. He tried oils, discovered he was good at them, and before his passing in 2009, his father told Saunier that he believed he had the same talent and should give it a try himself someday.

And so, in 2011, Saunier woke up one morning and told his wife Sandra “I’m going to paint today.” She assumed he meant repainting their apartment walls. When she returned home, nothing seemed to have changed. “Didn’t you say you were going to paint today?” she asked. He replied, “Yeah, go into the bedroom.”

There she found his first canvas. “I was completely shocked!” Sandra recalls. “You think you know somebody and he has never stopped surprising me. Whenever he sets his mind to something, he does it. I’m always impressed by that.”

From there, he began experimenting with Van Gogh inspired skies, flower fields, landscapes, and animals. One day he painted a horse. A Japanese collector saw it, “went nuts,” and commissioned a series of four or five life-size horse paintings for what he describes as the world’s only guitar museum in Japan. The project paid well but, more than that, it propelled his work into an unexpected level of visibility.

He began showing in New York City and Fire Island, then felt pressure to get an agent, take classes, do shows. “It started oppressing me. It became a job,” he says. “And that’s not what I want. I want it to stay fun, to do whatever I want.”

So, Sauiner stopped for a few years, only to returned with a new series: bold, textured backgrounds with animals “pulled” out of the color. He kicked off his latest offerings with a one-day exhibition at the renowned Spanish cultural institution La Nacional, the 158-year-old Spanish cultural institution on 239 W. 14th St. in Chelsea. He titled the exhibition, “Nature.”

“I started with the background, and then I kind of dragged that elephant out of it,” he explains, describing the works currently displayed on the walls in Bread Story, a neighborhood bakery on First Ave. and E. 16th St. in Stuyvesant Town.

Saunier’s work is marked by intense color and realism, something he connects to what he believes is tetrachromacy, a rare visual condition. “I see 20 percent more colors,” he says. When he concentrates, he can break down what others see as a single color.

“I do it for fun” he says. “No pressure.” Along with paintings, Saunier also creates steampunk inspired sculptures and functional objects: clocks, lamps, and phone chargers assembled from antique parts found in markets in London and France. One of his proudest series decorates animal skulls with vintage jewelry and metalwork, wired with lights, to convert into wall pieces.

“I love the idea of giving a second life to these animals,” he explains.

For now, Saunier chooses to live a quiet life with his wife in a two-bedroom apartment in the Stuyvesant Town. He continues to paint but finds the greatest fulfillment is impacting kids’ lives on and off the field.

“I’m super careful to try to make these kids good little humans in the world we’re in.”