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.

John Michael Kohler Art Center, July 2026 Photo credit: Frank Juárez

John Michael Kohler Art Center, July 2026 Photo credit: Frank Juárez

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 date. The media, the world, even our emotions have become something to be consumed before we move on to the next thing. Much contemporary art has followed suit and become another production to be consumed; it is artificial, even if made by humans. It's designed to be consumed, to sit as decoration, an aesthetic without insight. Higgs's art is a response to that; it is meant to challenge those behaviors and ideas, working to capture the layers of humanity and our emotions, and in turn the divine that we all exist within; the search for or experience of existence.

Higgs invites 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 viewing of the art, themselves, and the world around them. 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, the observer, speak back at it. But this can only be done by slowing down, not by swiping to the next piece.

Within each piece Higgs creates, he injects his own contextual emotional experiences, capturing them and grounding himself within the act of creation. But his experiences can’t be replicated by anyone else, and he wants others to bring their own to shape what the piece means to them. Born from his lived context, his process is driven by music and heavily influenced by his family's diaspora and place in Black America—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 and polymath from Madison, Wisconsin. He comes from a mixed-race family, serving as his roots. His father is Black, and his mother is white; they married 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, imprinting the flow of music into his being. 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 about 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. Much of his work falls within a non-objective, contextual abstract approach, utilizing oils and acrylics. What began as an outlet became something more: a drive to create and express. Within this emotional expression, he found freedom in structural abstractions that visually represent how his mind analyzes and structures the world around him. His study of history lays the foundation for seeing the world's layers through what came before and for understanding that the possibilities of the future lie in the choices we make today—applying a similar compositional approach to his artwork.

While finding ways to continue his political work through his profession and writing, Matthew also challenges some of those same philosophies in his art—challenging the way things are, and 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.