Art and Artificial Intelligence: Can You Prompt Your Way to Human-ish?

"...when a painting of mine goes on your wall, know that what you're living with is a unique act of human witness, held in pigment and gesture, doing its work."

I've been wondering about something...
     Out in the woods and in the garden I've been watching the growing season find its feet. Somehow all that looking finds its way onto my canvas. The looking, noticing, then mark-making, is what I've been wondering about lately because A.I. is making it feel more urgent. A.I. can generate a lovely painting in seconds. Technically accomplished, visually confident, indistinguishable at a passing glance. Mostly stolen. Maybe you've felt the odd unease without knowing why. That smoothness. The way an image begs for emotional response but feels empty because none was there when it was made. 
     A.I. can't go outside. It can't stand on the earth and feel life flowing underfoot. It can't notice, really notice, that the season is arriving differently this year, that a rhythm has shifted. And that tree you've walked by for decades--the delight and relief you feel to see it's still there after last night's storm. Still making the oxygen that you breathe. Still home to a family of owls. A.I. can't generate that. 

"Unexpected Pleasure," 2026, 32H x 45W on canvas. Tap image for details.

When I stand in front of a canvas I'm letting life experience and the quality of attention I pay to the living world move through my hand. A painting that comes out of actual looking and feeling carries the shape of real life experience. It's a record of someone being here, of what it feels like to be here, over time. Can these things be A.I. generated? The things that take time and real experience? I don't think so. Not yet, anyway.  Because  deep attention and taking time to feel is never the point of A.I. 

The point of my own art as a human being is to be out there on the soft spring ground, hands in the dirt, noticing what's growing and changing. And then going into the studio and putting that feeling on canvas. With those same hands and heart, over countless hours. So when a painting of mine goes on your wall, know that what you're living with is a unique act of human witness, held in pigment and gesture, doing its work. Hopefully making you look twice at the world you move through every day.

We're not short of A.I. artworks. We're short of attention and connection. And we're worn out. I'm not saying we should nix A.I. altogether. It has value. It has its place. But I do think how we focus our attention-- what we actually look at, what we choose to spend time doing, what we let matter-- might be the one of the most important things any of us decides right now. 

---

---

Studio News:
My recent solo exhibition, "Doings and Undoings" is online and there's still time to see it. This exhibition brings together paintings created during a series of intentional resets—deliberate pauses where I stopped to ask myself: what reveals itself when you stop reaching for the familiar?  

---