Artists of Note | Peggy Trigg - Southwest Art Magazine

Southwestern verve

Peggy Trigg, September Sky, oil, 12 x 36.

This story was featured in the May 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art May 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

WHILE NOTICEABLY design-driven, Peggy Trigg’s striking landscape paintings are also a tacit revelation of her lifelong connection with nature and the Southwest. She grew up on a ranch in north-central New Mexico and spent much of her youth exploring the same mesas and chamisa-dotted countryside she compellingly portrays in oils and acrylics today.

“I paint locally most of the time,” says Trigg, who resides in Questa, a historic village just north of Taos near the scenic Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. But the artist is quick to add that her paintings, completed both on location and in her studio, are not exact representations of the places she depicts. “If it’s a hot day, I might accentuate the reds and the oranges,” she says, describing her style as contemporary impressionism. “I bring out details based on how I feel and how the weather is—I try to really push that.”

: Peggy Trigg, The Base at No Man’s Land, oil, 24 x 12.

: Peggy Trigg, The Heat of the Beach, mixed media, 12 x 12.

: Peggy Trigg, Water in Motion, acrylic, 24 x 48.

Loose, lively, and rich with impasto, Trigg’s style is partly a product of her tools. She paints with spatulas, palette knives, and large household paintbrushes that allow her to lay down dynamic swathes of color on her canvas with bravura. “I’m always breaking scenes up into texture, patterns, and shapes,” she says, “simplifying things.” In a more liberal and playful fashion, the artist has also been exploring color and form in a series of abstracted mixed-media works. Trigg is a featured artist this month at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art. —Kim Agricola

Trigg is represented by La Mesa of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Wilder Nightingale Fine Art, Taos, NM; Jezebel Gallery, Madrid, NM; and Weyrich Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.