Kris Montagna aka Snakegrrrl

ARTIST STATEMENT 2025

Greetings!

I am a multimedia visual artist, primarily focused on 2D creations such as drawings, prints, and paintings. My original pieces are handmade, using mixed media (from charcoal to inks to bodily fluids) on whatever material avails me for canvas (from paper or linen to wood or plastic). I experiment with using a variety of objects for paint application such as standard brushes, kitchen utensils, make-up applicators, wine bottles, coins, etc.

I have been obsessively making art since being caught drawing on hallway walls as a toddler, mainly as an autodidact. I studied dance and social activism at Bowdoin College in Maine, followed by a masters in Expressive Arts Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge MA. My work life has spanned social work to arts therapy to retail to handicraft hawking. My personal life has spanned from coast to coast, heart to heart, and illicit to illaudable to illustrious.

My artwork is my life journal, my personal diary, and my “grimoire” (book of spells/magic/charms). My process merges improvisation with deliberation while exploring historical, cultural, and spiritual interests (myths and stories). These creations fuse raw life experience with surreal visions and transcendent ideation. I am motivated by the mystical process of drawing itself, a necessity for me as great as breathing. My inspirations range from the personal to the political, from private relationships to cultural influences. These images manifest in order to express my soul, as well as to fulfill a spiritual desire to foster new realities (to cultivate welcoming, transformational, devotional, joy centered energies and creative spaces).

Please enjoy, peruse, guffaw, ruminate, &/or contact me at: serpentspice@yahoo.com