I come from a family in which all women can draw and paint incredibly well. In fact, my mother is an accomplished illustrator and author of children’s books. Naturally, I was given crayons and colored pencils before solid food, and I dare say that painting was my favorite hobby during childhood. I drew animals, cities, planes, epic battles, intricate machines, and the like. Allegedly, I painted a violinist at four years old that was used on the cover of some music magazine. Some years later, I definitely won a bicycle for a picture I made with watercolors, even though I used the technique all wrong. In school, I got mad whenever I did not receive an A grade in fine arts class. In other words, I did my fair share of manual artwork.
All of that changed after I got my first computer and discovered other formats of art, such as music or writing. For some time, I tried a bit of calligraphy, and to this day, my peers comment on how tidy my handwriting looks (supposedly). I only picked up the pen when I had to, occasionally making sketches for my other work or short comics when I was bored in class. After I was done studying, even that was over. In a panic, I bought an Apple Pen with my name engraved on it: used it twice. Got charcoal and nice paper for Christmas years ago: still have not touched them. I am afraid of the blank page and that the first stroke might ruin it because there is no undo button.
Simultaneously, I am awestruck by what other people post on social media. Thus, I excluded drawing and painting from my hobbies altogether. What remains is my ability to express difficult subjects with a few quick strokes, making me the ideal sparring partner in “Pictionary.”
Luckily, manual artwork is not all there is to visual art. As I grew more skilled at programming, it opened new possibilities, which I felt much more comfortable with because every faulty step could be traced back and undone. Sometimes, my art happened by accident when I was actually plotting numerical data and forgot a minus or something (enough to bring down entire moon rockets). Additionally, I took photos and chopped them up in Photoshop, mostly for album covers.
Some of my problems were solved with the rise of AI-generated images. Yes, dear artists, I am one of the bad guys stealing your style. But rest assured, much of it is only used as input data for my own algorithms, which I am a lot more passionate about. Because honestly, who still looks at AI-generated things and says, “Wow, that’s cool!”
My favorite artists include (but are not limited to): Chiara Bautista, Zdzisław Beksiński, Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dalí, Zac Deloupy, M. C. Escher, Tyler Hobbs, Andrea Hoyer, Djamila Knopf, Sascha Wiederhold.
Below, you can find links to some representative examples of my work.