Gigi Spratley’s artistic journey began with a curiosity about the world and its endless visual languages. Her formative years were spent abroad in Rome, where she studied at the renowned St. Stephen’s School from 1974 to 1976. Immersed in the city’s rich art history and classical architecture, Spratley developed a lasting appreciation for the dialogue between past and present, between the eternal and the ever-evolving.
After her studies in Rome, she returned to the United States to pursue formal training in art. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art from Pitzer College and went on to complete her Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Claremont Graduate University in California. These years shaped her technical foundation and conceptual depth, allowing her to begin merging academic rigor with intuitive creativity.
Life and Work in Los Angeles
In 1983, Spratley relocated to Los Angeles, a city that would become a major catalyst for her artistic development. Surrounded by an atmosphere of experimentation and cultural fusion, she began working primarily in two-dimensional media, focusing on painting and drawing.
In 1985, she acquired her first computer, a moment that marked a pivotal shift in her creative process. Long before digital tools became ubiquitous in art-making, Spratley was already exploring how technology could interact with traditional drawing. Her early experiments with digitally produced imagery demonstrated both a forward-thinking curiosity and a commitment to expanding her visual vocabulary. She sought ways to integrate the precision of digital forms with the expressive immediacy of the hand-drawn line, an approach that reflected her larger interest in blending the organic and the mechanical, the natural and the artificial.
Expansion in New York
When Spratley moved to New York City in 1995, her practice underwent another transformation. The new environment, dynamic, dense, and filled with contrasts, inspired her to explore sculpture, assemblage, photography, and digital prints. Each new medium became a lens through which she could reexamine the themes that had always fascinated her: the passage of time, cycles of growth and decay, and the interconnectedness of life.
Her multidimensional works often meditate on the rotation of the earth, the inevitability of change, and the beauty inherent in organic forms. For Spratley, art is not merely a reflection of life but an active engagement with its rhythms and transformations.
Between Dreams and Meditation
Much of Spratley’s three-dimensional work occupies what she describes as “a space between dreams and meditation.” Within these works, veiled potentials are revealed, inviting the viewer into a liminal world where perception itself becomes fluid. The experience recalls the use of 3D glasses, transforming flat imagery into something immersive and alive.
In these pieces, Spratley’s aesthetic sensibility merges with her philosophical one. The dreamlike forms seem to hover between the tangible and the intangible, suggesting that all creation, artistic or otherwise, emerges from a state of quiet contemplation.
The Evolution of Ideas: From Street Art to Digital Expression
Spratley’s creative evolution has been as diverse as her influences. Her projects have spanned street art, writing, and animation, each informing the other in unexpected ways. This interdisciplinary approach allows her to move seamlessly between mediums, while maintaining a consistent thematic core.
Her series “Big Ideas” reflects this synthesis of vision and versatility. Within it, Spratley examines the mechanisms of desire, the emotional and psychological forces that drive human ambition, longing, and attachment.
When You’re Hot (2023): A Study in Desire and Duality
A defining work in this series, “When You’re Hot” (2023), exemplifies Spratley’s ability to fuse visual dynamism with layered meaning. Measuring six by five feet, this acrylic and plexiglass composition commands attention not only for its scale but for its kinetic energy.
Set against a black backdrop, the piece features an array of plexiglass shards, vividly colored figures, and lighthearted dashes that function like an energetic pulse field. Within this charged environment unfolds a symbolic menagerie: a blue stick figure reminiscent of a Hopi fetish doll, a green ghost inspired by 19th-century Japanese manga, and a yellow smiley face recalling 1980s pop culture. Each of these figures seems to occupy a different emotional and cultural register, together creating a tapestry of yearning, joy, and irony.
Elsewhere in the composition, arabesque streamers flutter like ethereal nymphs, and a pair of champagne flutes glimmer in the top-right corner suggesting both celebration and reflection. The entire surface hums with rhythm, as though sound itself were embedded in the paint.
It’s no coincidence that the piece feels musical. Spratley is also a songwriter and musician, having released two full-length solo albums. Her sensitivity to rhythm, tone, and harmony translates directly into her visual compositions, where movement and emotion intertwine.
Collaboration and Creative Partnership
Beyond her individual practice, Spratley shares a deeply collaborative creative life with her husband, Jack Waltrip, an accomplished musician and multidisciplinary artist. Their creative-romantic partnership often informs her work, infusing it with warmth and playful symbolism. The champagne flutes in When You’re Hot, for instance, can be read as a visual metaphor for their shared artistic celebration a toast to inspiration, love, and the ongoing act of creation.
The Art of Transformation
At the heart of Gigi Spratley’s practice lies a reverence for the transformation of materials, of meaning, and of perception itself. Whether painting, sculpting, or composing music, she approaches each piece as part of a larger cycle of renewal. Her art reminds viewers that beauty and change are inseparable, that stillness and motion coexist, and that every form, however abstract, echoes life’s continuous unfolding.
In a world defined by rapid technological and cultural shifts, Spratley’s work feels both timeless and timely. She bridges the analog and digital, the physical and metaphysical, offering a vision that is as intellectually rich as it is emotionally resonant. Through her art, she invites us to see not just the surface of things, but the luminous energy that animates them from within.
