Spotlight Artist

Adam Higgins

MFA Annual
Artist profile photo
Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

I make pictures of things I like in a room by myself. I look for a sort of hum in them: a moment of click and drone where I find something self-evident; a moment when there is a sudden quiet.

This sentimentality is weird and circular, like tricking myself into learning about my hands as if they weren’t mine. As if I loved my hands and wanted to love them publicly but found myself unable to without some outside information.

I’m obsessed with color: little piles of it, buzzing patterns of it, one color spread thin and next to another, the space between them becoming line. I can make light that way—and mirages. I often use sequences of five colors because it leaves one in the middle, like a color sandwich, to stop it moving around by itself.

Let’s talk shape: shapes riding an edge or just missing it, touching a point or forming a gap. I either wedge them together or leave them hanging. This has something to do with foreplay and comedic aggression.

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