By painting the landscapes in which she lives, Priscilla Wiggins shares the beauty of each moment ‘out there.’

by Marlys Hersey

It is not an exaggeration to say that Priscilla Wiggins lives the landscapes she paints. And I don’t just mean she lives in the landscape – she lives it.

While it’s remarkable enough that Wiggins not only paints on site, she lives outdoors most of the time, and has since 1977. Yet even more remarkable is her intense connection to nature, of which her paintings are merely the fruiting body, so to speak.

Viewing Wiggins’ paintings of the outdoors draws me instantly into her world. Whether the painting is of a place familiar to me or not, I notice textures I had not seen before, I marvel at the layers of the land, I am mesmerized by the colors and light. If I’m not pressed for time and can go with staring at one for a little while, I kind of feel like I’m floating.

Wiggins spends most days outside, practicing meditation, writing, hiking – and painting, for up to 4 hours at a time.

“Sometimes I’ll get rained out, snowed out, blown out,” she says. In the Big Bend, she gets also gets cooked out. “When I was at Stillwell’s [campground, north of Big Bend National Park] last week,” Wiggins told me when we met again in Terlingua in mid April. “I could only paint for an hour at night. I was so unbelievably hot I couldn’t even stand up, much less be at my easel.” Wiggins simply passed the time lying in her Subaru wagon (from which the back seats have been removed to make room for a sleeping platform and storage space for her painting supplies) working on her autobiography, which she started writing two years ago. “I’ve had so many lives,” she muses.

And indeed she has. If we were to pitch her life as the plot for a screenplay, it would go something like this: In her mid-20’s, woman working in an out-of-print bookstore and living in her native New York gets wild hare, borrows friend’s station wagon, drives out to Southwest, spends a few weeks camping with Hopi Indians, then taking first backpack trip (alone and wildly under-prepared) into and out of Havasupai Canyon in Arizona, and nearly dies of dehydration. Again and again, strangers help her out. Riveted by entire experience, she moves to New Mexico, and continues painting and playing in outdoors until her definition of “the rich things in life” is  to sleep outside, stare at the stars, and listen to the silence. For all but a dozen nights a year, she sleeps in tent, tepee, car, or on ground, summering in the mountains of southwest Colorado, wintering in the desert of west Texas, and making stops at her very rustic one-room home in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Continually paints surroundings and makes enough off paintings to get by....

Granted, it’s not an action adventure film. That’s precisely the point. “The silence, the darkness, sleeping on the earth – all these things add up to reaching that…silence of the mind,” says Wiggins. “When I can put my pad on the ground, lay down and look at the stars, I’m the luckiest person on earth. Just knowing that gives me a sense of calm. I look at my living as a luxury – that I can scrape by, making a living painting the beauty.”

Of course, just living outside as Wiggins does – in the Chihuahuan Desert of the Big Bend, in aspen groves in the Colorado Rockies – provides plenty of adventure. Besides epic backpacking trips over the past several decades (including hiking the entire Continental Divide Trail with a friend and his burro and dog), Wiggins has stories of being struck by lightning, abruptly moving camp to get away from bears, close calls with cougars, snakes, etc.

“People say ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ But I spent my twenties in New York City, riding the subways, walking the streets at night. So wilderness isn’t frightening….”

In her early childhood, Wiggins experienced the best of both urban places and wildlands. When Wiggins was just 3 years old, her mother moved them to New York City, and enrolled Wiggins in a new art school associated with Columbia University. “Every kid had an easel,” recalls Wiggins. “For me that was what you did with your life: you stood at your easel and painted.”

Even now, Wiggins waxes poetic about the practice she learned as a 5-year-old: “I love setting up my paints: the warm colors along the top, cool colors along the side. I love the colors, I love to mix them, put them on the canvas or board or whatever I’m using….”

When Wiggins was 4, her uncle insisted she come to his camp for the summer, on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. “My uncle had taught survival training in World War II; he was into making kids tough.”

Her uncle taught her and her cousin Margo, also just 4, to swim. They lived in cabins. They learned to sail. They camped on islands in the lake. “There were 3 sailboats, 20 girls. We could camp for days at a time,” says Wiggins. “We were totally safe in the arms of these women [camp counselors] and the lake was so benevolent…. I learned to have a lot of confidence in nature, and in my own basic goodness.”

It is clear that Wiggins did not stop learning when art school and camp ended. Evidence of a life dedicated to continual learning, her speech is peppered with references to many other influences: Buddhism, Abstract Expressionism, Quakers, the Hopis, Peace Pilgrim. In a story Wiggins tells me about a big frustration she faced last year, she mentions trying move past the irritation by employing the words of Buddhist priest and writer Pema Chödrön: “the luminosity of unlimited potential in every moment.”

Also, throughout our conversation, I notice how often Priscilla uses the terms “benevolence,” “healing,”  “gratitude,” and “luxury.” Interesting, coming from person who by Western standards is always roughing it. “I don’t like stuff,” says Wiggins. “I have as much as I need, and I try not to have any more – ‘cause my priority is to be out there.”

It just makes sense that Wiggins keeps returning to the Big Bend. Since her first visit in 1982, Wiggins has been in love with the place. “I love the vastness,” Wiggins says. “And the silence. I love the forest and mountains, too, but the silence of the desert? It’s like the Buddhists say, the mind is like a crystal you can see right through…. And in Big Bend there are so few airplanes. I find my whole being can relax.”

So it’s also no surprise that even Wiggins’ oil paintings, as one reviewer in New Mexico wrote, “have the soft, delicate quality of watercolors, and her palette often turns toward muted, mellow tones, reflecting someone quite at ease with her subject.” Also noteworthy is that Wiggins is so inspired by the places in which she lives and paints that she often returns to the spots, to paint the same scene again and again.

Moreover, to be in Priscilla’s company to is to be with someone strikingly present, lucid, and calm, someone who talks thoughtfully, recalls details very well, and genuinely listens, habits honed by her life practice.

“A friend said to me, ‘Your paintings give off so much good energy from the walls – that’s your service,’” says Wiggins. “They are soothing,” she concurs. “I like to soothe people, so I like people to buy my paintings. I know how much goodness can come into their life from having that on their wall. I know the benevolence of that place [I painted]. I go out do the painting. And bring it back. It’s some sort of magic transferral. The money just helps me go back out there.”

Priscilla Wiggins’ oil and watercolor paintings can be viewed at the James Evans Gallery and at Eve’s Garden Bed & Breakfast, both in Marathon, and at the Laurel Seth Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She can be contacted directly at: priscillawiggins@yahoo.com.