Willard Wigan from Birmingham in the West Midlands, United Kingdom is officially and prestigiously recognized as the worlds one and only micro artist. Willard creates highly detailed and intricately painted sculptures that are situated within the eye of a needle.  The photos of his works on this page are highly magnified so that you can see them. Below King Henry VIII and his six wives are accurately sculptured and stand inside the eye of a needle.  The overall detail on the figures is staggering, considering that they are almost invisible to the naked eye.      actual size on the right > when I reduced the image to about actual size then all detail is lost as the image becomes just a speck on the screen ! Willard sculptures figurines from such things as a single grain of rice, a splinter from a match stick or miniscule bit of plastic, his artistic works are in many instances no bigger than this full stop . A powerful microscope is required to view his works as they are so fantastically small that they defy the naked eye and understanding the concepts of this art is difficult to grasp and leaves one nonplussed.  To view any of Willard's masterpieces without a microscope is to look at a needle and see what looks like just a minute speck of dust in the needles eye.  Except that the speck of dust is a work of art that took Willard 3 months to create. The figure on the horse below sits upon the head of a normal size pin.  The eyes of the horse that are actually painted on as is the bridle, are almost on atomic scale ! and Willard does it all by hand and just his eyesight. Willard is a fantastically gifted craftsman of such magnitude words can hardly express his genius, he has spent his last 50 years though shrouded in gloomy thoughts of himself being an illiterate failure, and seeing himself as a  person as small as the works that he creates.  Recent fame has however shown that he is a master standing on the shoulders of giants, and it is pleasing to learn that all the fame and fortune has not gone to the mans head, he is reportedly still as modest as he ever was. Below another fine work, this time it is a figure of Elvis, standing on the end of a needle, the microphone cable is made from a single strand of a money spiders web, sometimes Willard even splices microscopic strands such as this, to make them even smaller. Willard was much deservedly presented with an M.B.E (Member of the British Empire) from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 for his services and innovations to the world of art.  The Prince of Wales called Willard's work  "phenomenal" and who can disagree. "Meeting Prince Charles changed my life." said Willard "  I've always liked him, but when he told me my work was 'phenomenal', it was as if I had been suffocating all my life and now, all of a sudden, I could breathe " Willard explains to people that he uses a hair off a dead fly as a paintbrush and he applies the pigments to the sculptures in between heartbeats so as not to miss.  The models are carved by a minuscule shard of diamond that is affixed to the end of a small acupuncture needle. Below is depicted a happy couple sitting at a table having a glass of wine, the object on the left is the tip of a ball-point pen to show the scale.  The wine glass in each figures hand must be millionths of an inch across.      Actual size on the right > Willard sold a large portion of his micro art collection for an undisclosed sum to Davis Cup Captain and leisure tycoon David Lloyd.  The 70 piece collection has been insured for 11 million British pounds, so it can be assumed that Willard got a good price for them. David Lloyd has also now become Willard's manager for the creation of further masterpieces and to arrange the art exhibitions  Private collectors of Willard's work  also include HRH Prince Charles, Sir Elton John and former  boxing champion Mike Tyson. Below is seen a microscopic reproduction of the famous 'thinker' sculpture, except that it measure less than a millimetre tall !   nearly actual size on the right > The amazing thing as that Willard has recently stated that he will go even smaller with the exclamation " you haven't seen nothing yet " Willard has sold separate pieces to specialist art collectors, the Statue of Liberty for example, standing in the eye of a needle, sold for £17,000 British pounds, this particular piece is now estimated to be worth over a million dollars.  A photo of it is represented below. There are exhibitions of Willard's art works with the pieces sealed in glass display cases with arrays of microscopes for the visitors to view them. Click on this image below to visit Willard Wigan's website and get all the latest news and views and details of the latest exhibitions. www.willard-wigan.com

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