Eric Daigh was born in Orange, California in the year 1977. The artist gained national acclaim when he won a the ArtPrize for one of his push pin portraits. He is the essential modern artist making use of all of the technologies such in his process as he uses photographs as a basis for his work. He then uses computer software to help aid him in color placement. He uses a very simple palette, think of a computer printer, he uses only black, white, red, yellow, and blue.
He is now based out of Michigan. For his collegiate studies he attended the great University of Montana at Missoula! The best small town city in America! I am biased as I lived there for 4 years but what an artistic community!
The artist is well known for what he uses to depict people, push pins! In some cases he has used more than 100,000 push pins in some of his works.
A clip from when he appeared on Sunday morning talk show on CBS.
A clip featuring the artists work at Northwestern Michigan College.
I consider Eric Daigh to be a pop artist for the fact that pop art was about looking at simple things, lets say a fire hydrant, with new eyes. This is a clip showing the largest ever mosaic made using push pins. The subject is an ordinary door handle that is made spectacular using Daigh’s push pin method. The work used more than 109,000 push pins. This work was done to fulfill a commission request from Acura motors.
I love to talk about art and business coming together. Make sure and check out some commissioned cars that were painted by famous artists like Warhol, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein. The cars began in 1975 with a design from Alexander Calder. This clip goes from the beginning until 2010. What a novel idea and I give kudos to BMW for their unique concept:
Mediums used: In addition to push pins Daigh has made his work out of duct tape and acrylic paint. This method of filling in the grid is reminds me of the great Chuck Close. Close started out in the 70s by using the airbrush to make very tight and hyper realistic works. He then found a method using paper pop which made the face into a grid of abstraction. An example of Close’s style done with a child is below.
I so enjoy looking at the way this artist sees the world. His process is very interesting and I hope one day to view his art in person. His works are done on board and it would be interesting to see the colors on the pin sort of float above the surface.
A link to the artist’s own website: http://daigh.com/
Get out there and paint!
D
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