Nichole Montanez

Nichole Montanez is a versatile artist living and working in Florence, Co. She received a BA in Fine Art from CSU, Pueblo and immediately went to work in journalism. Since then she has been straddling the worlds of fact and fiction. She spent 10 years documenting critically ill children seeking cannabis as treatment. When the project ended in 2020 she began painting. Though the medium has changed, her work still explores the delicate, fleeting nature of life. She uses flowers in an attempt to give visual representation to imagined spaces.

"When I first started painting flowers they were a matter of life, death, and the imagined space where the soul leaves the body — a snapshot. This new body of work is still about the cycle of life and the in-betweens — more specifically, the imperceptible moment of growth and acceptance. The decision to move on to the next phase. These pieces are about the power in shedding things that are no good for you and my attempt at giving visual representation to the beauty in that transformation." - Nichole Montanez