Matthew Braunginn compares his paintings to jazz music. He even plays it and various other genres as he paints.
He goes into each project not necessarily having a plan. But what emerges is a geometric photograph of Braunginn’s mind and emotional state at the time each painting is made. He mainly uses acrylic paints on wood and standard canvases to achieve each color’s deep yet vibrant opacity, as well as each distinguished pattern. Some of Braunginn’s paintings depict rounded shapes, while others sharply study three dimensional perspectives. Even more are circular. You might just find these pieces displayed in a 2025 Carnelian Art Gallery show, Braunginn hinted.
“I start out with a solid color and build from there,” Braunginn said of his artistic process. “Then it’s slowly constructing something out of it … like taking chunks away from a black piece of marble.”
Braunginn has been renting out studio space at Carnelian Art Gallery since June, and generally started painting about seven years ago, he said.
“I’m not entirely sure what got me into painting,” Braunginn said.
But he was in the middle of a career shift. Braunginn had been an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement from 2014 to 2016. He was the co-founder of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, a now defunct grassroots group that sought to raise awareness about racial inequities and other social justice issues. Braunginn grew up exposed to the issues that plague the city’s marginalized communities, as his father, Steve Braunginn, is a former chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Madison and a co-founder of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
“I had a lot of unprocessed emotions and feelings,” Braunginn said. “I started finding it energetically harder to be out front as an activist. I was also experiencing the early symptoms of a still undiagnosed autoimmune disorder. There were things I was involved with I just couldn’t stay on top of. I had the urge to have a creative outlet of sorts. I bought some painting supplies on a whim. The hobby just grabbed ahold of me.”
Adding to Braunginn’s need for creative expression was an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in 2020. He said that many social challenges he experienced as a kid that traumatized him suddenly made sense. He recalled that his diagnosing psychiatrist told him Braunginn ‘had the most abstract thinking he had ever seen in his career.’
That abstract thinking is displayed in Braunginn’s paintings, he said. But he wants the viewer to draw their own interpretation of that abstraction. Braunginn doesn’t want to tell the viewer what to think. He wants to show them.
When asked about what or who inspires his art, Braunginn said Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky is a favorite. Kandinsky is known for being a pioneer of abstract art in the Western world in the early 1900s.
As he continues his stay at Carnelian Art Gallery, Braunginn’s next experiment will be with oil paints. He said he had kept an eye out for some time for a gallery that had affordable studio space available for rent.
“It’s a really nice spot that’s a short bike ride away,” Braunginn, who works during the day at a consulting firm for labor unions, said.