This is the second in this series of portraits for 2022, and directed toward the digital art NFT community. No, it is not a self-portrait. The faces I’ve used so far are ones I generated using AI. Usually people manipulate the algorithms to create unrealistically beautiful, unbelievable, and fashionable people, but I wanted to explore somewhat the opposite. I wanted to create individuals that seemed conscious, believable, flawed, and in a state of vulnerability, self-doubt, or some sort of fractured identity in relation to online presence, virtual reality, and the metaverse. And then I further accentuate that, the sense of a “glitch in the matrix”, and visual and anatomical anomalies using Photoshop and digital painting techniques. I used 3 separate programs and a host of custom techniques to create the painterly effects.
A close friend once commented that my art was “jarring”, and this was a great compliment. Yesterday I tweeted that, “some art is a veil on reality, and some art unveils reality”. The latter, for me, is the greater challenge, and something I look for. I won’t elaborate more on that at this time. You probably know what I mean.
People who know their recent art history, who like Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and even Gerhard Richter will appreciate some of the technique going on in the mouth, below.
Here’s another work which was part of a planned series which fell utterly flat within the NFT community.
And here’s the first in the “Misfits of the Metaverse” series.
I’m planning to make about one of these a week, and to do 6 of them. I’ll re-evaluate at that point if I want to make more or switch up my game. I don’t expect to sell more than a few editions tops, and I AM doing a bit of a social experiment, but if all goes as planned, I will discuss that after I’ve completed the series, minted them, and listed them as NFTs.
You can find the NFTs in this series here: https://objkt.com/collection/KT1DB4BUnPbV6ZG8bTfKrKeA3cY629nbMAUL
Until Next Time…
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 