Sigi Campbell

Tennessee • Born 1944 • German–American

Sigi Campbell was born in Crimitschau, Saxony, Germany, in 1944. She later moved to the United States, where she built a long and active career as a painter, printmaker, and assemblage artist. Campbell received formal training through scholarships with master artist Sylvia Pauloo at the Los Angeles Museum of Art and at the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), which she attended in 1963. She continued her studies in Studio Arts with Mr. Keyes at Long Beach City College and pursued additional coursework in aesthetics at California State University, Los Angeles.

Over more than three decades of professional work, Campbell developed a diverse and expressive practice encompassing oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, ink etching, pastel, clay, and mixed-media assemblage. From 1976 to 1980 she owned and operated her own gallery in Dallas, Texas, where she also taught visual awareness and painting. After relocating to the South, she became active with the Spectrum program at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga and exhibited works in the museum’s 1990 Spectrum Art Auction. She continued exhibiting throughout Tennessee and Georgia, including regular displays at Linda Woodall’s Gallery in Ooltewah.

Campbell has also been an influential arts educator. She taught Principles of Art to young students aged 9–13, co-founded the Foundation for Creative Arts in Summerville and Chattooga County, and later co-founded the Mentone Center for the Arts in 1988. Her studio at the base of Lookout Mountain served as both a teaching space and a center for her evolving artistic practice.

Her work reflects powerful post-war memories translated into impressionistic and expressionist forms, using highly textured palette techniques and vivid, emotionally charged color. Campbell’s subject matter often explores personal history, European postwar landscapes, and symbolic abstractions. Assemblages incorporate textured and treated linen, hand-painted papers, and recycled materials to create layered, tactile surfaces.

Sigi Campbell’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Gallery of the Laguna Art Association (Laguna Beach, CA), Ellison’s Market Square (Fort Worth, TX), The Scott Mansion (Fort Worth), Olla Podrida Gallery and Workshop (Dallas, TX), The Enterprise Corporation (Houston, TX), and the Aliya Gallery at The Morningside (Atlanta, GA). Her paintings and assemblages have been collected by more than 200 private collectors.