ARTIST BIO & STATEMENT

Faith Higgins is a painter from Philadelphia, PA, who is a Junior at University of the Arts. She is interested in surrealism and is influenced by artists like Marilyn Minter and Jenny Saville because of their dramatized style of painting. She is also very interested in human psychology and social justice issues, and these themes tend to appear frequently in her artwork. Higgins has received both Gold and Silver Scholastic Arts Keys, featured in numerous local art shows and has exhibited at Montgomery County Community College, and The University of the Arts. She plans to graduate next year in the spring and then attend graduate school to get her Masters in Art Therapy in the future.
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My art practice includes figurative portrait paintings, usually of women. These paintings often take the format of photo-realistic surrealist style of art. I start my artistic process by creating my own reference photos and transform them into large-scale paintings. I often include certain objects in my work such as water, mirrors, dramatic makeup and exaggerated/colored lighting. My materials are often oil and acrylic paints on canvas, it is rare that I venture from painting. I often gravitate more towards oil painting due to the vivid color and luster that allows for my works to be very saturated. My painting technique is very precise and planned out in order to achieve somewhat photo-realistic effects. Some main themes I focus on are dreams, psychology, the female form, beauty standards, social justice issues, and even sometimes fantasy/fairy tales. Oftentimes my work is a product of how I'm feeling or what I feel is important at that given point in time. Recently my work has taken a turn from social justice warrior esk, into “here's how I'm feeling right now based on the current events of my life”. My work is certainly up for interpretation and really has no particular message I required the audience to receive as long as I can make the viewer feel something, anything, that's sufficient to me.