BIOgraphy

Bibby Gignilliat is a contemporary mixed media and abstract collage artist based in Sausalito, California, where she works from her studio in the ICB Art Building. From childhood, Bibby dreamed of becoming an artist, but her creative path first led her to the culinary world. She founded and built a successful culinary team-building company operating in four major U.S. cities before selling the business in 2017 to pursue her art practice full-time. Known for her vibrant, large-scale paintings, Bibby creates richly layered work using acrylic paint, found paper, collage and collected materials. Her intuitive process of building, obscuring, sanding and excavating layers gives each painting a sense of history, spontaneity and discovery. Bibby’s work has been exhibited at the de Young Museum and Crocker Art Museum and is held in private, corporate and hospitality collections internationally. She is represented by Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine, Forma Contemporary Art, and ADC Fine Art in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition to her studio practice, Bibby teaches mixed media painting through workshops in her Sausalito studio and online courses taken by thousands of artists worldwide. Her teaching encourages artists to loosen expectations, trust their intuition and approach the creative process with greater freedom, confidence and curiosity.

I never know who’s in charge—my art or me. The process is alchemical, magical, joyful. The maverick in me is encouraged. The perfectionist? She gets a time-out.

Artist Statement

Each day as I step into my studio, I enter a playground – a place for taking risks, letting go of attachments, and experimenting with new ideas. The materials guide me: a childhood letter to the tooth fairy, a One-Way Road sign, a billboard scrap foraged in Mexico City - all find their way into the work. My spirit laughs out loud as I break rules and draw outside the lines. The process is alchemical and joyful, encouraging the maverick while giving the perfectionist a time-out. As I layer and discover, collected fragments speak in their own wild syntax, revealing stories I didn't know were hiding in my hands.