We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daina Higgins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Daina, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’d say my current series of paintings, Letters to Home, is personally meaningful. Before this series, I was more engaged with myself as a viewer, experiencing external places I had been to. In this series I’m looking inward, experiencing memory and personal and familial history. This series is about loss. Specifically, loss of family, home, and the feeling of identity that it provides. I’m hoping that viewers of my work will relate to that idea, since we are all dealing with this in some way, whether you have been uprooted for employment or opportunities, to escape persecution, because of damage from climate change, or because of the actions of your government. I don’t think viewers should place a qualitative value on this idea- that loss is “bad” or “good”. It just is, and this is our reality now. I’d rather my work be seen as interesting, more than decorative or “beautiful”.

The circumstances are, that during the pandemic, for two years, my husband and I were relentlessly stalked and harassed by our next door neighbors, until we had no choice but to sell our home of eleven years and move away. I had just completed a series of paintings about my neighborhood, and was beginning to feel quite rooted when this happened. This sudden upheaval and change caused me to reflect on my identity as an artist. I was also coming back to Brooklyn, a city I lived in for fourteen years and then moved away, and everything is different. In addition to this, my situation is a mirror of my grandparents and my mother who were displaced after WWII. My paintings have a rigid formal structure and within that I experiment with content and painting applications. They are trompe l’oeil renditions of enlarged notepad drawings. The basis for this is the diary I kept to catalog the neighbor harassment. They are a specific scale, and have a color palette informed by office supplies. There could be memories of a story my uncle told me or my own memories. And the paint is applied in different ways that refer back to all my lives as a painter: muralist, graffiti artist, sign painter, house painter, studio painter. The palette refers to my lives as an administrative professional. So it’s not so much about experiencing an external place that I am in, but directly experiencing my internal life and history as an artist.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been painting and drawing for over thirty years! I got into art when I was ten years old, and studied at the Columbus College of Art and Design’s Saturday morning classes (Columbus, Ohio). I moved to New York City in 1997 to study fine art at the School of Visual Arts, earning my BFA in 2001. During this time I was involved in the graffiti art community, so during the week I was taking courses in contemporary art practices and on the weekends I was traveling around the tri-state area painting on walls. Beginning in 2003 I showed in commercial galleries, blending graffiti and fine art. In 2007 I entered the MFA program at Queens College, CUNY, in Flushing, Queens. I earned my MFA in 2009, and in 2011 I moved to Philadelphia so I could have a home and studio. I got married to my husband in 2017, and in 2022 we moved back to his home town, Brooklyn NY.

At this time I maintain a studio in Brooklyn called DH Studio & Art Office. In addition to creating original works of art for the commercial and institutional market, I also provide the following services for the art industry: Teaching- I am a watercolor instructor at the School of Visual Arts; Bookkeeping Services- I provide financial accounting support for galleries and art organizations; and Art Handling- I provide art handling and installing services for institutional clients.

I have a background as an administrative professional for service industries- law, architecture, and fine art. I use my knowledge base to help my clients organize their systems and improve efficiency. I am skilled in data asset management and recently became a Certified Public Bookkeeper after years of experience in managing offices. Artists are often mischaracterized as disorganized and spaced out, but many of us are always thinking logistically and carefully planning our next move.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Live with art. Meet some artists, tell them you want to live with their work. Even if you don’t have a lot of money, you will find a way. It is expensive to create and store artworks, and most of us are funding this however we can. It’s a small thing, but just showing your desire to have our art in your life, it means so much and keeps us going. Most people think they are priced out of this market, but I have worked with almost any buyer. If you prioritize having art, you will have art. I thrift my clothes so I can buy art.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Freedom. Creating in the studio, self-directed, without any constraints or demands is complete freedom. I think, with the realities of end stage capitalism and mass surveillance, that more and more people will seek this freedom. Enrollment in art schools is at an all-time high.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dainahiggins.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dainahiggins_studio/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daina-higgins123/

Image Credits
Photographs by Jeanette May