Kim Wiggins
New Mexico magic
Kim Wiggins’ work is a love letter to New Mexico, one written with care and sensitivity to the land, and from the perspective of someone who understands the history, culture and people. You almost have to go back to the Taos Society of Artists to find an artist who has painted one place with such a genuine fascination and adoration.
Wiggins will once again bring his unique views of New Mexico—taos, Santa Fe, the Rio Grande Valley and Roswell, his home—to a new show, The Modern West, opening August 3 at Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe.
“I’ve always tried to have a unique vision that is separate from other artists. My desire has been to always capture those different visions. Claude Monet once said, ‘Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see.’ I’ve always taken that to heart when I paint New Mexico,” Wiggins says. “When I look at these places, I just see all the Hispanic influences, I see the vibrant color and I see the people. It’s all right there for me.”
New works in the show include Spring Morning on the High Road to Taos, which is rendered in Wiggins’ modernism-meetsregionalism style. Especially noteworthy in the work are the various cloud forms, from the wispy rain sheets that guide the eye into the painting, to purple diagonal clouds pointing into the Taos scene, to brilliant white clouds that billow from the distant horizon. Each form is painted with a different pattern of brushstrokes. “I’ve always been interested in a linear type of distortion. Many times I will take a sketch and apply the same nuances that I saw in the lines and apply that to the paint,” he says. “It gives a wonderful linear patterning through a compositional enhancement. You can see it in the clouds and also highlighted in the sky. The lines are meant to push and pull you through the painting.”
Other works include Song of Beatien Yazz, which shows a lone figure on horseback amid a landscape filled overhead with fiery red clouds. “Beatien Yazz was this Navajo artist I always admired. My mother knew him and collected his work and passed it down to me,” he says. “This is the land he comes from, and I’ve just translated it through my eyes.”
Wiggins takes great pleasure expanding the definition of Western art with each new work. His own history is rooted in the arts. His father, photographer and writer Walt Wiggins, was friendly with many of the greats who came through New Mexico and it allowed a young Kim to be exposed to important artists and their works. “I was just a young boy when I met Henriette Wyeth, and was taken to meet Georgia O’keeffe on her ranch, or Thomas Hart Benton or Peter Hurd. Later I was mentored by Alexandre Hogue, who was mentored by [Ernest L.] Blumenschein,” Wiggins says. “So when I was searching for my roots as an artist in the 1980s, I was looking back on who I was and what I wanted to become. All of these people influenced my work, but I like to think I’m painting toward my own vision as an artist.”
Other works in the show include Santa Fe Moon, a nocturne set in downtown Sante Fe, and Springtime Along the Upper Rio Grande, which features a pink cherry orchard blooming from the green of the Rio Grande Valley. “In the spring when those trees are in bloom it’s like walking through the movie set of The Wizard of Oz,” he adds. “The colors are just magnificent.”