ART

In 2023 I began playing with the AI image generator Midjourney. I became fascinated with its ability to generate endless variations of the same image—feeding directly into my interest in non-identical patterning, and I started to see the potential of these images as my new “stickers”. In a continuation of both the “Vase” series of paintings I started creating these large digital collages. The Midjourney output was incredibly detailed, but with small file sizes, collaging them allowed me to keep the details, but the final image sizes are necessarily large, which is why most of these are 44 x 56 inches in size.

Furthermore, Midjourney shows a high propensity for kitsch—notably fantasy art—so, instead of fighting against it, I started to work with it. The first one I completed in May 2023, was of bejewelled Pegasi; the next was of fantasy warriors, which are truly hilarious when you examine them up close. While not all of the pieces work with kitsch, they mostly contain some sense of humour.

Each has between 70 and a couple of hundred images generated in AI. Some of these images are composites themselves (e.g. the elements in frames, the frames were generated separately), but the bouquet arrangements are entirely my own.