Daina Higgins is a painter working in oil, gouache, watercolor, and spray paint. Her work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Columbus, Philadelphia, Boston, and Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in 15 solo exhibitions since 2005. In 2021 she mounted a solo exhibition at Contemporary Art Matters in Columbus, Ohio. Recent group exhibitions include Basin Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Cerulean Arts Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and Piano Craft Gallery (Boston, MA).

She has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtNews, The Columbus Dispatch, The Village Voice, and Create Magazine. In 2006 Roberta Smith reviewed her exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, ending her review with “[she]…creates a poetic awareness of the passage of light, moving through the world, bouncing off things and making visual experience fleetingly possible.” That same year, her graffiti was featured in Nicholas Ganz’ book Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents.

Higgins has been awarded numerous grants and prizes including the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, three grants from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Artist’s Fellowship Grant, and the Silas H. Rhodes Merit Scholarship to attend The School of Visual Arts, where she earned her BFA in 2001.

Her work is in the public collections of the Columbus Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where it is on permanent view. She is a member of the Long Island City Studio collective in Queens, NY. She is represented by Contemporary Art Matters in Columbus, Ohio.

Higgins received her MFA from Queens College, City University of New York in 2009.

Statement

Over the past two decades, my work has focused on the visual and cultural identity of urban sites in the American Northeast. My painting is rooted in my emotional and perceptual responses to these specific places. I use a variety of painting techniques to convey the experience of place. My paint mediums are carefully chosen to not only visually represent their subject; but to culturally represent them as well. I employ a wide variety of tools and mediums including photographic reference, spray paint, oil paint, and water-based media. As an example, my photorealist spray paint paintings of forgotten urban sites and non-places stem from my youth as a graffiti artist.

Recently my interest in place has shifted to one of dis-placement. This is spurred by a recent traumatic displacement that caused me to reconsider my familial identity as the daughter of WWII Displaced Persons and a descendant of the first white landowners of the American Southwest. I see displacement as a condition of contemporary life as human migration increases due to gentrification, climate change, war, and political upheaval. Through personal memory and the experiences of others, I explore the meaning and structure of home, community and identity in a tenuous 21^st Century existence.

2018

Harris Gallery, University of LaVerne, Claremont, CA, “To Here Knows When” with Liat Yossifor, curated by Dion Johnson

Graduate Thesis Exhibition with Nathania Rubin, Klapper Hall Gallery, Queens College, CUNY

The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA "2021 Annual Domenic DiStefano Memorial Works on Paper Exhibition" Curated by Aida Birritteri

Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus, OH, “Taking Interest: Summer in the City” virtual show

2020

Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus, OH, "End of Summer"

Cerulean Arts Gallery & Studio, Philadelphia, PA, "The Stillness of the City"

Shot Tower Gallery, Columbus, OH, "40th Anniversary of the Fine Arts Program - Fort Hayes Alumni Exhibition"

LinkPHL, Philadelphia, PA, "Art on Link" (digital art show)

The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA “157th Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings” (online)

Gallery of Art, Temple University Rome, Italy, "Tiny Biennale: 20/20 Vision" Curated by Susan Moore

2019

2015

2023

Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (third grant)

2021

The John R. Maxwell Prize (for oil painting), The Woodmere Museum’s 79^th Annual Juried Exhibition, Juror: David Wiesner

Emergency Grant, Artist's Fellowship, Inc.

2020

Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (second grant)

Coronavirus Artist's Relief Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation

Second Place Award, “157th Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings”, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, PA, Juried by Matthew DeProspero

2022

Artist talk, Maspeth Town Hall Senior Art Program, Queens, New York