Breanna Huggins
Artist Bio
Breanna Huggins moved to PDX in 2015 out of high school to study Animation and Media Art at the Art Institute of Portland. Falling in love with the colorful city, she now lives and works in the local community. With a breadth of work spanning from custom fine art, to tattoo design, to street portraiture and more; she's developed a diverse skill set that inspires her to seek new and unique creative challenges. Huggins' art is derived from meditation on personal emotional experience. Over the years she has discovered profound inspiration in the collision of structured order in the physical world against the freewill produced by the chaotic subconscious. This duality presents a strong parallel in the decision-making process of creating artwork, and feels to her is a pure extraction of what it means to experience humanity.
Piano: “Thunderhead”
I have very early memories of experiencing an obsession with pianos- I would see one and be filled with joy instantly at the prospect of busting out "Heart and Soul" with all the voicing might of a 5-year-old. As an adult, not much has changed. I remember my first year exploring Portland and coming across a beautifully decorated piano sitting on the street corner... just waiting to be played. That was one of the first moments I felt at home in PDX.
The concept of Thunderhead is tied to the strong nostalgia I have of experiencing piano music at a young age. Haiyao Miazaki would create these breathtakingly gorgeous scenes in his animated movies that often displayed background scenery with big skies and wide open spaces. This imagery, coupled with the wistful piano compositions of Joe Hisashi, really struck a cord that even now continues to ring through me. The natural beauty of the sky is one of these ubiquitous things that is easily taken for granted, but it's a source of harmony that you can draw from daily.
"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul." — Wassily Kandinsky