Snake Jagger, Palm Springs Whimsical Artist with a twist!

Who is Snake Jagger? A Palm Springs Whimsical Artist with a twist!

So what kind of desert art makes you happy?  If its Snake’s version of Whimsical Surrealism with a twist, then go no further. Read on for more about Palm Springs Whimsical Artist Snake Jagger and take a peak below at some of his very fine work.

Having worked in this style for the past 25 years or so, the first time Snake Jagger painted a desert landscape it just seemed happen on a bow tie shaped canvas. Since then he continues to explore and expand that visual style, which is orderly, a bit whimsical, and has a wide array of iconic symbols that tend to show up in a lot of his work.

Snake’s style has not changed dramatically and his stylistic changes come slowly over time.  As he says, “favoring order and continuity” is the way .

Noble Richardson is the artist he was most inspired by. Noble is a southwest artist who was decades ahead of his time- A visionary. When Snake was a teenager, he saw some of his work and immediately knew he wanted would become a painter. How’s that for falling in love with a career?

The biggest influence with regard to the surrealistic depictions contained in his work comes from Rene Magritte. He refers to his style as ‘Whimsical Surrealism’, and believes that would also be a fitting description for Magritte as well.  There are some darker aspects of Magritte’s work that aren’t present in Jagger’s though, an undercurrent that’s difficult to describe.  And of course, the field of surrealism is very broad, so he finds himself on the far left, with the more nightmare-like images of Salvador Dali on the far right, and Magritte there somewhere in the middle.

Thomas Hart Benton was also an early inspiration to Jagger who loves the movement in his images and he also admires the work of M.C. Escher. His creative ideas and execution of those ideas have continued to amaze him for decades.

SNAKE JAGGER BIO [b. 1955]

I have been drawing and painting since I was six years of age. I am a self-taught artist, but I have always been interested in the work of prominent artists and have studied their various techniques of presenting imagery. Although I had dabbled in art throughout my life, I did not get serious about it until I was about 25 years old.

My early artistic influences were a broad swath of the art world: Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Hart Benton, Peter Max, Noble Richardson, M. C. Escher, and my personal favorite, Rene Magritte, whose work was a constant inspiration to me early in my career. Over time, I have developed my own unique way of portraying the desert southwest and other areas in a style I have come to call Whimsical Surrealism.

I have always seen my career as a gradual evolution of both style and subject. Changes have been mostly incremental, but sometimes I feel compelled to break out and experiment in new directions. For example, over the past 18 months, I engaged in an intense exploration of abstract art. Abstract painting stretches my creative sense, focuses my mind, and is an enormous leap into the unknown, because I must yield the outcome to what is happening on the canvas in real-time. This process is the antithesis of my past imagery, which is based on significant amounts of planning and careful execution.

During this same time period in my career, I also have begun to work on a series of assemblage sculptural works based on found objects that I gather from many places in the landscape surrounding Palm Springs, CA. These works are entertaining to the eye, contain elements of humor, and are also a thoughtful extension of the Whimsical Surrealism style.

Snake Jagger can be reached at : <snakejagger1@aol.com>

http://about.me/snakejagger

Photos provided courtesy of  Snake Jagger- Palm Springs Whimsical Artist .  All rights reserved and all art work is copy protected.  Do not reproduce without permission.