"Dreams and Memories” is the name of Lindsay Wiggins’ new show at ART+Cayce, which will open with reception on 14 October from 6-9p at 1329 State St. in Cayce. Inspired by Surrealism, the works evoke emotional landscapes that dreams warp, elide, and distort. At home with graphite, oil on canvas, and mixed media, Wiggins creates images with deeply expressive consciousness--a mother and child, two women (friends or sisters?), lovers—all inhabiting warm, eerie spaces. When visible, the austere faces simply stare out with absent gazes against meaningful, if mysterious, tableaux: a rocky outcrop looking like a cracked molar, a ranch house whose lights shine on a man hunched over in a wheelchair, a watering hole in some exotic African veldt. Sometimes individuals remain alone, isolated, and wrapped in the complex symbology of memory. The darkly magical stages, for example, are often populated with animal and vegetable life, zebras with ropey legs, trees with elongated branches and roots, clouds with slender appendages. The effect is disorienting, strange, and inviting. We have entered the graphic dreamspace familiar to all of us. Wiggins herself acknowledges, “our memories and dreams communicate how we perceive things. Each one of us has our own unique perspective, while at the same time there are some universal symbols with which we all can relate.” Speaking about the puzzle of interpretation, Wiggins has developed “universal symbols” that include color, spatial orientations, and nests of thin line suggesting dendrites. Sometimes the warm gray tonality of Wiggins’ graphite pencil implies absence. Sometimes a dark field implies ambiguity. The nudes are always vulnerable, hiding, contemplative. Clearly, this code communicates subliminal thought in ways that harmonize conscious and unconscious experience and interpretation, conveying “various psychological dimensions” that Wiggins comes back to time and again in her art. She remarks that language cannot describe dreams, so she has invented a different mode of expression for this unexplored region of inspiration.Wiggins is an emerging woman artist of refined talent, known locally for her participation in the painted violins project. She received her BA in Studio Art from Columbia College in 2011. Since 2005, she has exhibited her work in group shows all over Columbia, both as a painter and award-winning photographer. This admirable versatility and rigorous preparation have served her well in the “Dreams and Memories” exhibition.
