About

Over a century ago, John Singer Sargent took a side trip to visit an old friend, Charles Deering. While there, he was enchanted by the unfinished summer home of Charles’ younger half-brother James. It was February of 1917 and though the house was not finished, Sargent painted the patio, the terraces, the boat basin with lattice-domed tea house and a barge at the Vizcaya estate. He walked shady paths with wiry young oaks and gumbo limbo trees to a statue garden that no longer exists. He painted the grass terrace that is now paved in stone. 

I draw from the same spaces. Today you enter the home and a member of staff reminds you to remove your backpack. A quick right and a left and it’s there. I stood pressed up against the corner in my Lululemon pants and On Cloud shoes. Standing and sketching in ink on paper. Same space. I keep returning to Vizcaya, Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden and to historic Coral Gables because these places hold the tension between original vision and slow erasure. King tides wash over the breakwater stone barge. At Vizcaya, what was once 180 acres is now 50.

I work in ink on archival paper, onsite and from my studio. I have drawn every day since September 2023. My interest is in what remains and what’s in process of being reclaimed.


Missy Briggs lives and works in Miami.