About Paula Wiggins

“My work is about color, symbol, humor, people, the rational mind, the irrational mind, the world we see, the world we don’t. If the personal in art does not touch the universal, it is narcissism. Inward directed art should reach a spirit that links it to a wider being.”

Born in Long Beach, California, Paula Wiggins grew up in the Kansas City, Missouri area and moved to Cincinnati at the age of 12. She graduated from DAAP, University of Cincinnati in 1981. She later attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati to study graphic design and illustration. The paintings and drawings of Ms. Wiggins have been shown in exhibitions and galleries around the world, from the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago to Heim und Handwerk in Munich, Germany. In addition to private collectors around the country, her work is included in the corporate collections of Proctor and Gamble, La Rosa’s, and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. Illustration projects include a calendar for the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, promotional material for the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, and a poster for the Underground Railroad Freedom Center. In 2002 Ms. Wiggins was selected as the showcase artist for the prestigious Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City, Missouri. In 2008 her illustration “Eustafa Tilley” was featured the New Yorker Magazine. She is represented by the Phyllis Weston Gallery and Art Design Consultants in Cincinnati, Ohio, B. Deemer Gallery in 

Louisville, Kentucky.

Ms. Wiggins uses a layered approach to her paintings. She starts with laying down a wash of color, adding handmade paper, then text and pictures from old books. From these elements a painting emerges. The work tells ambiguous stories of the past and the future that reside in the unconscious of all of us. In frequent travels throughout Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, she gathers material that become part of her art.