Meet Snake Jagger | Artist / Whimsical Surrealism

We had the good fortune of connecting with Snake Jagger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Snake, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I started drawing when I was 6 years old. One afternoon I saw my mother and father both painting pictures in our dining room, it was the only time they ever did anything like that together, but seeing them both drawing, then painting the pictures they were working on flipped a switch in my brain at that early age, and I began to try my hand at drawing, and it soon became an obsession for me, as I was always feeling bored when there was nothing to do, so I would draw pictures to entertain myself, and look at other examples of artwork, like comic books, and cartoons on tv on Saturday mornings.. Later on as I entered my teen years I would try to paint pictures, I was reticent at first, because I always felt that I could never get to be as good as the artists who’s examples I would be looking at, but slowly and shyly I kept trying to get better at it. I was in my last year of high school when I had painted a picture of the two hands almost touching from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting, for my art class, and my art teacher, Mr. Nastasia looked at it and told me I would never amount to anything with my artwork. That spurred me on to try harder and hopefully prove him wrong, which I eventually did. So I continued to paint throughout my life, and finally developed my own style of painting desert landscapes, and once I sold a few of those, I decided that I would go ahead and try to support myself with my art. It wasn’t long before I was able to do just that.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I describe my artwork as “whimsical surrealism”, I paint mostly desert landscapes from my imagination, a “manicured desert” is the term I use to describe these scenes, with everything neat and tidy and it it’s place, then I add a few things that are somewhat out of place, so now people expect to find something in each landscape and go about looking carefully for those things. I started painting with the intent of trying to make a living with my art when I was around 28 years old. And through the years I’ve struggled just as most artists do, but over time I started to become more successful at painting things that people liked and would purchase. I acquired managers in my early days of showing my artwork, they taught me a lot about the art business, but after some years we parted ways and I continued on taking care of my art business myself. Some of the things I’ve learned over the 5 decades of doing art, is that it is important to be very personable when showing your art, if people like you that are more inclined to support you. And that presentation is very important to having good success at promoting and selling your art. You can only sell the original one time, so reproductions are the bread and butter of the art business. And if it isn’t selling, double the price. You must show that you value your time and effort and unique creations so that potential customers will take you seriously.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
At the age of 17 I was introduced to a man named Noble Richardson, as he had come to my friend Wally’s house for a short visit, and at some point he walked out to his car and began to pull out three of his original paintings to show the group of us that were gathered there. When my eyes beheld his fantastic desert landscape paintings, all painted on odd shaped canvases, with bright, intense colors, and almost psychedelic rainbow borders surrounding and framing each scene, they just took my breath away. I was flabbergasted at what I was seeing. And his images burned into my brain, becoming one of the main inspirations that later manifested itself in my own depiction of the desert landscapes that I lived in. Then there was Rene Magritte, another big influence on my creativity, which was responsible for my developing my habit of including things that are somewhat out of place in my paintings, and describing my artwork as “whimsical surrealism”. There was also Peter Max, Maxfield Parrish, Walt Disney, Thomas Hart Benton, and the brothers Hildebrant, all of these artists were huge influences on my creativity and determination to succeed in developing my own unique style of painting.

Website: Www.SnakeJagger.com

Instagram: Instagram.com/snakejagger

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snakejagger

Other: https://snake-jagger.pixels.com/