By Cristian Gonzalez

Mirabel Wigon, an artist living in Elk Grove, didn’t set out to become a painter. Her journey actually began in anthropology before a serendipitous encounter with a painting class changed her trajectory. “I was actually an anthropology major, but then I took a painting class, and I was like, ‘woah,’” she says. “Maybe this whole time I wasn’t so much interested in studying material culture, but being a contributor to it.”

Wigon’s love for painting evolved throughout her college years, and in 2014 she graduated from California State University East Bay with a BFA, a pivotal moment that solidified her dedication to art as a career. She also went on to earn an MFA in drawing and painting from CSU Long Beach. 

Initially inspired by anime and comic books, she eventually shifted her focus to the complexities and possibilities of painting. Her current work is deeply influenced by her immediate environment, particularly the landscapes and environmental disasters in Northern California. 

“It’s changed so much over the years. Actually, like within that last five to six years — from grad school till now,” she says. “I was making a lot of work about disparaging energy systems. Like, look at all this energy extractivism and how terrible that is.”

Now, much of Wigon’s work captures the beauty and destruction of the landscapes she calls home, reflecting on the wildfires and floods that have plagued the region. However, she also sees these catastrophic events as metaphors for transformation and resilience. Her current series focuses on the idea that environmental collapse can foster strength, codependency and renewal, offering viewers a chance to reimagine what could be possible.

“So there’s this event and it’s really terrible, but then in the paintings there are these portals which have a hopeful new future,” she says. “How could I take something that has fallen apart, like a broken system, to be a catalyst for something rejuvenative.” 

Wigon’s process is just as intricate as her themes. Using a combination of digital maquettes, Photoshop collages and photogrammetry (a technique used to create three-dimensional models of objects based off of photographs) to inform her paintings. These models turn out glitchy, as she intentionally feeds the photogrammetry program less information than would be required for a life-like interpretation. 

“I think that idea of the ‘glitch’ as an analogy to painting, because it’s transformative,” Wigon says. “So as the painting builds, it’s like morphing, along with how the model is also being morphed and changed into something new.” 

Her work invites the audience to engage with the deeper, often unseen layers of meaning and process. Whether in her artwork or her teaching as an assistant professor of painting at CSU Stanislaus in Turlock, Wigon is passionate about sharing her creative process with others. 

“It’s like a reciprocal relationship,” she says. “I’m sharing things that I get really excited about with them … and then a student asks a question, or they have a series of things that they’re trying to problem solve, and all of a sudden it’s like, whoa that’s super interesting. … It’s just like this feedback loop.”

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.