Digital archival print
I use AI to start my paintings: I trained my own AI model on images I’ve collected – either taken myself or stolen from social media – since 2008. I use text prompts with keywords to ask for a specific kind of visualization and what I get in return is created from that model. I use AI as a spiritual oracle into my own memory. Rather than using physical automatism, I use digital automatism to imagine and sketch of each of my paintings. I use RunwayML for the first few iterations, and begin a process of layering, cutting, erasing, and recoloring the images I get in Photoshop. There are several new AI filters in Photoshop I may use as well. Twenty years of professional life working with technology has informed my artistic practice, up to the point of translating my digital sketches into paint.
My painting Overwhelming Nothing was created in the same way, starting from AI, traveling through many digital iterations which I made into a painting. I then took to social media to ask for interpretations of the original work. This painting spoke to many in a much different way than my existing work, and is a turning point for me personally, as well. My digital layering process is clearly referenced, yet there is an expression of color and emotion that can only be done with paint. Overwhelming Nothing lives in two worlds.
I fed each interpretation into Midjourney as text prompts, each written by the resulting image, which I asked to be the next painting in a series starting with the original. While the AI work, /imagine Overwhelming Nothing, are interesting, scary, and random in a haunting way, one can also see the limitations of AI. The colors are the same as the original, and the painting is clearly referenced as to make sense as the next in a series might be. A human artist would be able to branch beyond the original in color and even subject and still be able to connect the next work as part of a series.
LOCAL PICK UP
Purchased works can be picked up at the gallery during regular business hours and by appointment after the close of the show on September 24, 2023.
SHIPPING
For a shipping quote please email nizak@mac.com with the name of the piece you are considering and your shipping address. Pieces will ship after September 24, 2023.