Sugar Kisses

After swopping from Information Design after 2 years to studying Fine Art at the University of Pretoria, I majored in both painting and printmaking. I have always been attracted to the possibilities of multiples, of making an artwork available to own by more than one person.

 Digital printmaking became a natural evolution in my process given the time I spent in the graphic design industry learning the software and various output possibilities.

 I applied these skills creating exclusively digital art works for a large part of my career, stealing from Google and producing editioned digital prints.

 I then started painting again and was lured back by the tactile nature of paint, by the unpredictability of the outcome and by the physical engagement in the work. I began to reverse the process, painting first, digitising the paintings and then adding the ‘found’ images. This was around the time that text prompted AI generated images became interesting to me. I realised that I could use this tool to tailor make the images that I wanted to use as additions to artworks or simply as references.

 The art work Searching for satellites is an example of this. With the other two, Sugar Kisses and Cosmic Connection I decided to take a step back to move forward, by painting onto the prints, creating ‘one of’ works.

Paint captures and reflects light in a way that digital prints struggle to, it almost breathes in the air and the releases a vibrancy through its colour and application, this is challenging to achieve with pure synthetic inks printed by a machine.

 Thematically my work often fixates on human connection and on shared experience, my mediums have started to mirror these sentiments. Connecting and exchanging, painting, generating printing and painting again; an infinite conversation.

AI and technology driven mediums are incredible tools, I do believe though that they can be neither the solely beginning or the end of an art work. Alexa will always need my help.