Matthew Braunginn (Higgs) is a self-taught artist from Madison, Wisconsin. He comes from a mixed-race family, serving as his roots. His father is black, and his mother is white, marrying not too many years after Loving v. Virginia struck down laws prohibiting mixed-race marriages like theirs. He grew up in a loving home, filled with the sounds of jazz floating through the air, as pancakes were being made on Sunday mornings. The sounds of music still float through the air as he paints.

Matthew started painting in 2017, as he had to step away from activism due to the emergence of a chronic illness. Much of his work falls within a non-objective, contextual abstract approach, utilizing oils and acrylics. While painting started as an outlet, it became something much more: a drive to create and express. Within this emotional expression, he found freedom in structural abstractions that visually represent how his mind analyzes and structures the world around him. His study of history lays the foundation for seeing the layers of the world through what came before and for understanding that the possibilities of the future lie within the choices we make today—applying a similar compositional approach to his artwork.

​While finding ways to continue his political work through his profession and writing, Matthew is challenging some of those same philosophies in his art— challenging the way things are, daring us to grow past our discomforts to become something more, something better. By daring people to slow down, and sit with each piece, to sit with their emotions as they explore them along with the piece they are absorbing, he is challenging the world of "next," and the modern consumption of being human— our emotions, dating, and life, reminding us what it truly means to live and exist within ourselves and among each other.