Untitled (Houses and Mountains with Some Paper Collage)

This watercolor likely served as a finished work as well as a study for an oil painting from roughly the same date. Higgins did not record the specific location, but he certainly encountered the scene in northern New Mexico. In the mid-1930s, Higgins had fallen under the spell of John Marin, who had visited Taos in 1929 and 1930. In following Marin's example, Higgins employed diagonal and truncated lines to signify unseen energies within nature.