My name is Brennan Rigg, I am a visual artist, poet, and musician born in Colorado in 1995.  My work is heavily influenced by geniuses of the Italian Renaissance, but I am also inspired by the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists of the 20th century. My academic pursuits include studying with Suzanne Acosta at the College of Southern Nevada in 2015, and undertaking a grand tour in 2018- visiting the greatest art and archaeological museums throughout Italy, Spain, France, and the UK.

  Through my immersion in art-history, I traverse a variety of traditions and artistic forms. In my work, I allow them to interlace, and I pay heed to the overlap of mediums. The rhythm of a model's pose reads like the rhythm of a musical composition. Composing a photograph is no different from this. As a writer and a picture-maker, I mutually employ the techniques of each to each. Paintings are poetic, poems have imagery, songs tell stories. I see it all as experimental, and alchemic. We expose silver to light in emulsions for reactions. Flax and pigment are raw and unwieldy if not properly alchemized. Similarly, music must be known before it can be played, and all of this creation exists 

as the life of an idea, completed infinitely faster than it could ever be made tangible.

  I engage with subconscious and archetypal themes from conception to realization. Whether instinctual mannerisms, or enacted poses, I work with visual representations of the human psyche.  I have a strong relationship with figurative symbolism and the obscure narrative language of allegory. I aim to synthesize the calculated enigmatic qualities of old masters, with an uninhibited playfulness of childlike exploration; exercising intuition without indulging too deeply in impulsivity. It is a repeating sequence of resolutions in pursuit of the ever receding.

A strong work of art should command presence and consideration. A beautiful drawing will draw you. An audience should be brought to pause and ponder their reflection; for all art serves the function of reflectivity, as a truth mirror to show us more of who we are. 

I feel a duty to slow the pace of contemporary viewers. Frequently today the utility of art is forsaken, and in its stead we find decorative space-fillers. We are tantalized and sometimes addicted to items that facilitate expediency, self-affirmations, and shallow inclinations.

In this world of hardened literalism, the language of art is a near-forgotten language of romance and metaphor. 

To truly see requires attention, effort, co-creation, enthrallment and curiosity.  

What might your heart cry out were you to pass in silence?

JBR