In 1977, classically educated Priscilla Wiggins made a decision. It seemed the natural world was quickly being destroyed by our species’ rampant growth. She decided to devote the rest of her life to camping in nature and painting views from her campsites as a celebration of the beauty that still remained. What makes her unique as an artist is that she has to be surrounded by nature as she paints.
The lure of Big Bend National Park drew her to its wonders first in the winter of 1981, when she drove to the park from Southwest Colorado where she’d been artist-in-residence on Vance Ranch, painting aspens each summer. From then on, she returned to the park every winter, and for two years beginning in 2003, worked as a volunteer painter at undeveloped campsites.
She gave demonstrations and shows at the Panther Junction visitor center. In 2006, she began camping and painting at Stillwell Ranch just outside the park, and became their artist-in-residence for every year minus Covid years up to the present. She created this painting, “North from Stillwell,” there.
It was featured on a billboard outside Albuquerque to advertise the fifth annual New Mexico Painters Exhibition in 2018 at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where she has shown her paintings every year.
Ms. Wiggins has had numerous solo shows in Santa Fe and here in the Big Bend: at the Paisano Hotel in Marfa and the Ashby and Allison gallery in Alpine. Currently she is exhibiting at the Old Spanish Trails museum and gallery outside Fort Davis, and Eve’s Garden in Marathon. She is represented by Argos Gallery in Santa Fe.
