Back in 2001, I got my first Wacom tablet for digital drawing. I was in college, and I was eager to explore the medium and I had to argue for the legitimacy of completing drawing class assignments in Photoshop with my professors. They were concerned it was somehow “cheating,” as if the mark-making was somehow aided by the translation from stylus to screen.
In reality, it was an entirely different kind of hand-eye coordination, done without looking at the hand. Not so very unlike learning to catch a baseball.
I could see the future coming, and I knew that if I wanted a career I was going to need these tools.
Flash forward 24 years, and I’m fighting a different kind of fight for digital art, against robots scraping and remixing my and my colleague’s original work and turning out nothing new. I’ve noticed that your average person scrolling the socials is either not paying close enough attention to notice when they’re looking at an AI-generated image, or they don’t care.
But I don’t think that is going to mean the End of Art, or Artists, for that matter. I think we need to surround ourselves with real things, real expressions of our humanity, to feel whole.I think looking a person in the eye and saying “yes, I see you, I am connected to you through this thing you made that I love and want to keep near me.”
Isn’t that what art is meant to do?
I have often been afraid to call myself a fine artist. Illustrator, sure. Cartoonist, definitely. Maker-of-Things. Anything but Artist. I didn’t feel like I have earned that, because my work is colorful, cheerful, features animals with big eyes, is not “serious” enough.
But if I have ever been anything, I have been an artist from the moment I could put a mark on a paper.
I want you all to know, that as long as I can conceive of an image and use paint or pixel or bezier curve to make it come to life, I will continue to do so.
For those of you who have ever bought something from me, know you have my deepest gratitude. I’m going to keep on making more work, and working harder than ever to find collectors who can collaborate with me to make this my career.
If you’re in the market for original work, or a commission, we should talk. Just shoot me an email.
Originals are not always accessible to everyone, so I’m still making high-quality prints. But if you have the budget, consider buying original work from an artist you admire. It doesn’t have to be me, but our humanity is in our art, and our artists need your support now more than ever.
As always, thank you all for being Patrons of the Arts.
