Kim Wiggins – The Courage to Be Original

Kim Wiggins is a world-renowned painter from New Mexico, and one of the most recognizable artists working in the American West today. His bold, swirling canvases have made him one of the leading artistic voices of what's come to be called the New West. His work hangs in the Autry, the Booth, and the American Museum of Western Art in Denver, and this past year he won Best in Show at the Prix de West, the most prestigious award in Western art, becoming the first modernist ever to take it home.

Kim comes by all of this honestly. Both sides of his family came west in covered wagons in the late 1800s and settled into ranching along the Pecos River. His mother was running two ranches and a nightclub in Arizona by her mid-twenties; his father was a photojournalist for Life and Sports Illustrated, and a bush pilot who once had to sprint back to his plane in the Amazon and count the arrows in the side of the fuselage. Kim grew up surrounded by creativity– Thomas Hart Benton paged through his sketchbook and he ate lunch with Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch. He began focusing seriously on painting while stationed in Europe with the military and soon became the youngest member of the Society of American Impressionists — a career most artists would give an arm for, and one he walked away from completely.

We talk about why he walked away, which starts with a moment at a show in St. Louis when he spotted one of his paintings across the room, hurried over, and discovered it wasn't his. We cover the lean years that followed, including knocking on doors in Lubbock in the summer heat with a car full of paintings. And we get into the ideas behind the work: why a loss of innovation is the death knell of a civilization, why he watches children in galleries instead of collectors, the paintings he made for the NAACP after his son asked him a question he couldn't answer, and his conviction that a gift, by definition, belongs to someone else. I first met Kim back in 2022 at Maxwell Alexander Gallery's ten-year show, where he was on a panel I moderated, and I've wanted a longer conversation ever since. Hope you enjoy.

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Kim Wiggins Prix de West Maxwell Alexander panel discussion (2022) Full episode notes and links: https://mountainandprairie.com/kim-wiggins ---

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TOPICS DISCUSSED:

0:00 - Introducing Kim Wiggins 3:44 - Wiggins' family history 9:49 - Kim's dad's photojournalism travels 12:44 - Parental pressure? 17:07 - Military education 20:36 - Money v. creativity 28:36 - Making the decision to change course 34:52 - When things started to work  38:42 - It's never about Kim 43:47 - Continuous evolution 49:44 - How Kim's paintings come together 53:10 - Inspiration from his son 58:45 - Collaborative projects 1:04:26 - Blood and Thunder 1:06:21 - All the circles aligning 1:11:03 - How art has changed in the West 1:14:00 - Book recs 1:17:47 - Wrapping up ---

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