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.

Higgs' work is rooted in the tradition of abstract expressionism and is informed by the cultural inheritance of Black America. Incorporating this inheritance of music, history, and its insistence on creation as an act of resistance. Through it, Higgs positions his creations as a masculine practice of building rather than domination. and destruction

Each piece is made within a soundscape, be it Jazz, Funk, Soul, Hip-Hop, Classical, and more. Each composition is infused with the structures of those sounds, while he explores the intersection of his internal and external worlds through metaphysical structures, geometry, and spatial expressions.

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.

Within his works, he sees these as a masculine act of creation during a time of renewed destruction within a masculine form. He also pulls his experiences coming from a mixed-race family, injecting the abstractness of Black music within his art. Yet, while his works are a part of his self-expression and creation, their existence shifts depending on each observer.