MIKE PIGGOTT | i'm pretty sure i've never been here before

MIKE PIGGOTT: i’m pretty sure i’ve never been here before
EXHIBITION DATES: December 16, 2016 – January 28, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION: December 16, 2016; 6-8pm

Tayloe Piggott Gallery will feature the work of Wyoming artist Mike Piggott in his one-person exhibition entitled i’m pretty sure i’ve never been here before, December 16 through January 28. The public is invited to celebrate with the artist December 16, 6-8pm.

The exhibition will include fourteen new oil and gouache paintings in which Piggott continues to explore his relationship with nature. Not unlike a photographer that collects images on film, Piggott collects images in his memory and waits for the moment he can explore them on his canvases.

In Piggott’s newest body of work chickadees float freely in space with wings folded; an owl hovers above a branch in a field of green and blue that appears more like camouflage than tree leaves; watermelon slices lay carefully arranged on a log floor; and yellow daffodils cast a red shadow. Mike Piggott is an exceptional painter, he knows the history of art and he understands modernism.

His painting “Black Floral” depicts a small table in an all but empty room and begs for a vase of flowers on the cloth covered table. Piggott teases the viewer with a Cezanne-like tabletop that lifts up to shift perspective. In the intimate painting “Carol’s Clock #2” sans the hands, Piggott has included two framed artworks from his past, not by his hand but by artists who have inspired him.

Mike Piggott’s new paintings are not only compelling and curiously autobiographical, but historically referential in style. His new work, possibly full of inside jokes and innuendo, may just be his best yet.