January 2024 Newsletter
Welcome to 2024 everyone. I hope that you all had a chance to spend some time with friends and family over the past couple weeks and that your batteries are recharged for the coming year. I want to thank all the people who came out to the December event my wife and I hosted at Contemporary Art Gallery in the Paseo.
As I mentioned last month, I will be the featured artist at the gallery in February. The gallery walk will be February 2nd. If you want to get a sneak peek without the hassle of gallery walk parking, Thursday the 1st will be your chance.
This month’s newsletter will start from the question “Will AI make visual artists obsolete?” However, those goal posts are moving so rapidly as to make any conclusions drawn today outdated tomorrow. But if I may take a 30,000 foot view; AI trains on large datasets and in the visual arts, those datasets are art made by human beings. (So far: When does AI start to feed on itself? But that’s another topic and not for today).
The digital art platform Midjourney will recreate the Mona Lisa or The Joker from Batman (Reid Southern on Twitter now X). The Mona Lisa is in the public domain, The Joker is not. Lawyers are already involved and content creator protection was a major point in the recently settled Hollywood writers’ strike. Who knows where the final line in the sand will be drawn? Will AI created visual art go the way of the music industry where streaming services pay the bulk of the creators nothing while annually charging consumers hundreds?
Fortunately for visual artists, our marketing model is already predicated on direct interaction of the consumer with the art and/or artist either in a gallery, a festival, or a website. My hope is that visual artists get protection against AI bots scraping our websites and regenerating our work for the public without our knowledge or compensation.
Many artist coaches start from the advice that you have to do what you’re doing for yourself first, work on your craft, and develop your voice. If it connects with people, that’s a bonus but you must start from within yourself. The fact that you’re receiving this newsletter means that at some point you connected with me and my work enough to sign up for this newsletter. For that, I’m grateful.