Brian Vigue is an artist from Maine but definitely not a Maine artist. He took an interest in illustration starting in 1982 with three things: Peanuts comics, arcade games, and boxcars in the train yard. Peanuts was rather self-explanatory, but Brian strayed from a future of train engineer. He was more interested in the logos and designs of the boxcars, a foreshadowing to his later career in graphic design.
The video games, too, made a lasting impression: upon receiving his Commodor 64, Brian wondered if more left-brained activities were his style. For five years, starting in 1986, he continued to render artworks but in raster form, all of his creations laid out on grid paper accompanied by a base-2 numbering system and binary equations jotted in pencil. All of these creations were input and saved to floppy disk, but by 1991, the year of Brian’s high school graduation, the C64 was becoming obsolete, outgrown— so new avenues were pursued. If only he had discovered his talent sooner, Brian often wonders.
Free from school, Brian dabbled in comic strips and paintings for a few years until setting off to college in 1995 to major in graphic design. There, the entity he knew as Vigue Artistry merged into one word: Vigistry. His medium of choice at the time was portable color pencil, and it was then he discovered an interest in fantasy art, inspired by such masters as Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, and Clyde Caldwell. In 1998, he started entering his works in local art shows and won some awards despite his conservative location.
Brian had always wanted to illustrate fantasy novel covers, and starting in 2000 he got his wish with Renaissance Alliance Publishing out of Texas. Later, he was published in GASP horror magazine, and his crowning achievement to date: Heavy Metal Magazine. Brian had often fantasized about working for Magic: The Gathering, too. In a meeting with Lars Grant-West, Lars said that Brian was 85% there, so it’s only a matter of time.
Today Brian tries to maintain a delicate balance of art, some writing, and a continuation of video game production and web design, all while managing the graphics department of a New England trading guide during the day.
One nonstop duet of his left and right-brained engineering is his online gallery, www.vigistry.com. Check it out!
