Peggy Trigg

My art is all about the process of working through my emotions by playing with materials and colors in an abstractive way. This is my reaction to the world around me. I need to make art in a fun, colorful and reflective manner. The viewer hopefully will feel a sense of intrigue when looking at my work. I work in mixed media and fiber. I first start with creating small mixed media collaged abstractions. I use pieces of hand painted or printed papers that focus on getting my emotions out in a playful way with line, shapes and color. Sometimes this reflects words or objects. I often start with poetry or visual elements like rocks or plants. Often this turns into a more therapeutic exercise as words become impassioned and shapes become personal symbols. Once the papers are completed, I cut them up, move them around and put them back together. This is now all about composition, without it, a piece won’t work. For my fiber pieces, I take a finished mixed media piece and transfer it onto a large paper and make a pattern. From here I cut out the matching material pieces and sew them back together, like a puzzle. I always improvise some along the way. For texture I use the stitch but sometimes use other surface enhancements like scraps of yarn or old buttons. This process goes full circle. While the creation of the mixed media papers is fast, loose and therapeutic, the collage of the papers or the sewing of the fabric is slow and meditative.

I am a native New Mexican and was raised in Cerrillos and later Las Vegas, NM. My professional life included teaching art at various high schools and establishing and working with different art organizations. I taught high school Advanced Placement art classes. My favorite unit was the interpretative abstractive unit. In this 9 week section, the student completed many lessons that focused on the breaking free of restrictions. They had to focus not on the observed, but on intuition and feeling. This was my favorite unit to teach and it is the backbone of my own personal work, using intuition and emotion to lead in my explorations of mixed media and fiber. I live and work in the small town of Questa where I am a member and project organizer of the Questa Creative Council and member the Taos Abstract Artist Collective.

2-D, Collage/Mixed Media, Fiber Arts, Painting (all materials)