A defiant literary magazine.
Volume 1, Angee Montgomery, Magnolia Grandiflora
Angee Montgomery is a contemporary Fine Art Painter based out of Hernando, Mississippi. Her passion for visual art led to private painting instruction in her early teens, foundational education from Memphis College of Art, and a BFA from the University of Memphis in 2014. She’s had many creative professions dotting her path as a young artist such as Graphic Artist, Creative Educator and Community Arts Director for the DeSoto Arts Council.
Her work has received numerous awards such as First Place in Oxford’s Biggest Baddest Art Exhibition and Honorable Mention in Meridian Museum’s 47th Biennial. Montgomery has secured several grants aimed at enriching her local creative community. Among these efforts, offering the Motherland Creative Retreat (a nature based artists retreat in rural Mississippi) stands out as most impactful.
Montgomery’s paintings schism back and forth between the domestic and the wild, blending the lines between nature & nurture. The motivation is driven by a celebration of every experience and curiosity for what could be. Direct observation mingles with imagination and historical reference to create works with a rich personal yet universal narrative. Working with surface and building up the paint in layers is central to her process. There is always an emphasis on gesture and mark-making to give each painting a poetic power.
Volume 2, Katie Bernadette, Cosmic Embrace
Katie Bernadette is an American Freelance Award-winning artist. She remains reclusive in her sacred space of creation where she finds solace and purpose. She is grateful to be able to share her art with the world and draws inspiration from the unseen and often overlooked emotions that ripple beneath the surface of our daily lives. Her art is a cacophony of traditional brushstrokes mixed with the vibrant, pulsating colors of the digital realm. The canvas is her confessional, the digital screen her oracle, each brushstroke and pixel an ode to the boundless capacity of human emotion. Each piece stands as a testament to the unspoken narratives that dwell within us all—those moments of ineffable joy, profound sorrow, and everything in between. She offers a glimpse into the beauty of our shared humanity, hoping to inspire others to embrace the full spectrum of their emotions and to connect more deeply with the world around them.
Cosmic Embrace is inspired by “The Goldilocks Dilemma” by Levi Abadilla (also appearing in volume 2.)
