Every piece is signed as Higgs. Higgs from Higginbotham, Matthew's paternal lineage, a rich history of Civil Rights, liberation, and the struggle of the African Diaspora. Finding meaning, soul, and a people in the attempt to capture and erase those very things.
Higgs is the Higgs Boson, the particle that gives things mass. Without it, all this space and existence would have no mass.
HIGGS: About The Artist
HIGGS creates oil and acrylic abstract work, situated at the intersection of his external and internal worlds, infused and immersed in music.
We live in a time when we are pushed to swipe for the next video, the next person to potentially date, and when engaging with the world, media, and our emotions has become mass consumption to be disregarded as we move on to the next thing. Higg’s art is meant to challenge that, to challenge those behaviors.
Higgs's intention is to challenge viewers to slow down and engage not just with his art, but with how the art guides their emotions, and how those emotions, in turn, guide their view of the art. To sit with discomfort, thoughtfulness, warmth, heaviness, or ease; whatever may come to the surface. To bring their lived experiences and let the piece speak to them, as they speak back at it. But this can only be done by slowing down, not by swiping to the next piece.
The intention behind my art is for every viewer to slow down, sit with it, let it tap into their emotions, and then let those emotions guide them through the piece.
Within each piece Higgs creates, he injects his own contextual emotional experiences, capturing them in stillness. But his experiences can’t be replicated in anyone else, and he wants others to bring their own into shaping what the piece means to them. His process, born from this emotional context, is driven by music and heavily influenced by the music of his family diaspora—Jazz, Funk, Soul, R&B, and Hip-Hop. His approach is directly inspired by jazz, often non-linear, yet structured, an injection of soul as you enter a hazy club with vibrant and soulful sounds, presenting a kaleidoscope of spirit.
Matthew Braunginn (Higgs) is a self-taught artist from Madison, Wisconsin. He comes from a mixed-race family, serving as his roots. His father is black, and his mother is white, marrying not too many years after Loving v. Virginia struck down laws prohibiting mixed-race marriages like theirs. He grew up in a loving home, filled with the sounds of jazz floating through the air, as pancakes were being made on Sunday mornings. His parents put their all into raising their two children, and like all humans, sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes they fell short, but love was always the seed, root, and soil of his family. It was a home of dinner conversations around race, politics, class, existence, and the struggles and flourishing of life— a home of art and creation.
Matthew started painting in 2017, as he had to step away from activism due to the emergence of a chronic illness. Becoming a self-taught painter was a surprise in how it drew him in. Much of his work falls within a non-objective, contextual approach to abstract expressionism, utilizing oils and acrylics. While painting started as an outlet, it became something much more: a drive to create and express. Within this emotional expression, he found a freedom in it that words often couldn't serve justice, often being misunderstood due to being on the Autism spectrum.
While finding ways to continue his political work through his profession and writing, Matthew is challenging some of those same philosophies in his art— challenging the way things are, daring us to grow past our discomforts to become something more, something better. By daring people to slow down, and sit with each piece, to sit with their emotions as they explore them along with the piece they are absorbing, he is challenging the world of next, and the modern consumption of being human— our emotions, dating, and life, reminding us what it truly means to live and exist within ourselves and among each other.
Curriculum Vitae
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Art & Lit Lab, Madison, WI · Nov – Dec
2024 Bethel Lutheran Church, Madison, WI · May – Jun
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 100 State, Madison, WI · May-Present
2026 City-County Building, Madison, WI · May- Present
2026 Commonwealth Gallery, First Wave Line Break Festival, Madison, WI · March
2026 UW-Madison Art Lofts, Madison, WI · March
2026 UW-Madison Hospital · Feb-March
2025-26 100 State, Madison, WI · Nov- Feb
2025 UW-Madison Children's Hospital · July
2025 100 State, Madison, WI · May – Aug
2025 Pyle Center, Madison, WI · Jul
2025 Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, WI · Mar – Jun
2025 Carnelian Art Gallery, Madison, WI · Mar – Apr
2025 Omega School Gallery, Black History Month Celebration · Feb
2024 Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, WI · May – Sep
2024 100 State, Madison, WI · May – Aug
2024 Commonwealth Gallery · May
2024 Omega School Gallery · Feb
Fellowships & rRsidencies
2026 John Michael Kohler Arts Center Emerging Artist Fellowship April- July
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2025 LAB^4 Community Curator Project, Arts + Literature Laboratory, Madison, WI · Apr – Jun
