Push-Pin Art Edit

Eric Daigh's Portraits
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These push-pin portraits are a modern take on Monet’s dotted paintings; from afar, they look like beautiful, full-colour portraits of people, but close up, their true pixel-like nature is revealed.

Eric Daigh, Southern California-born artist, is displaying the creative projects in Northern Michigan. He loads his canvases with pins, sometimes more than 10,000, in basic hues of black, white, blue, red and yellow. Despite the limited colour palette, he is able to craft incredibly detailed works of art.

“It’s always portraits. I just don’t think anything else would be compelling,” Daigh says. “I think the faces are the interesting part, the method, the fact that I’m using push pins, has to take a second place to them. And the piece needs to convey something about the subject, which usually means no smiling.

“I’m looking for the most unaffected or unprojected gaze,” the 30-year-old says. “I want it to look more like a question than a statement. A piece can take anywhere between 2 days and months and months, depending on how much time I can devote. Technically, if I just sat in front of one and didn’t stop, I could do a big one in about 8-10 hours.”

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