Why AI Didn’t Kill My Art—It Made It More Human
Let’s get something out of the way:
AI is not the enemy of artists.
Perfection is.
When AI tools like MidJourney, ChatGPT, and Runway ML exploded onto the scene, the art world had a collective panic attack. I watched artists say things like:
“AI will replace us.”
“Nobody will care about real art anymore.”
“What’s the point of painting if a machine can generate anything?”
I get it.
I felt it, too.
But instead of turning away from AI, I did the opposite:
I got curious. I leaned in. I experimented. I taught it. I collaborated with it.
And somewhere along the way, something wild happened…
AI didn’t make me less of an artist.
It made me MORE of one.
Let me explain.
AI Showed Me What a Machine Can (and Can’t) Do
AI can do some incredible things:
✅ Generate endless visual possibilities
✅ Remix styles, cultures, timelines, aesthetics
✅ Show you what an idea could become in seconds
✅ Help bypass perfectionism and fear
But AI cannot:
❌ Feel
❌ Be vulnerable
❌ Take risks without safety nets
❌ Make something sacred or spiritually charged
❌ Pour a lifetime of memory, pain, intuition, and body into a single mark
In short?
AI can produce images.
But only humans can create art.
AI Didn’t Replace My Creativity—It Accelerated It
When I use AI, I don’t ask it to finish anything for me.
I ask it to provoke me.
I treat AI like a collaborator, not a shortcut.
Here’s how I actually use it:
I feed it my ideas, symbols, colors, textures
It throws back unexpected forms
I react, refine, reshape
It pushes me further than I would go alone
I return to analog and paint what only I can feel
The final result is something neither of us could create alone.
The Real Breakthrough: AI Helped Me Find What I Truly Value
Working with AI made me realize something profound:
The future of art is not about skill.
It’s about soul.
It’s about the tremble of the hand.
The hesitation before the mark.
The “wrong” stroke that becomes the most beautiful part.
The moment where you let go and the work takes over.
The silence before an idea arrives.
AI can’t touch that.
Machines make options.
Humans make meaning.
AI Made Me Fall Back in Love with the Hand
Paradoxically, the more I work with AI, the more I crave:
The smell of oil paint
The drag of charcoal across paper
The texture of thick impasto
The meditative rhythm of repetition
The honesty of a flawed, breathing surface
AI showed me how sacred the handmade truly is.
In the age of infinite images, originality isn’t about what it looks like.
It’s about what it feels like.
And feeling is human territory.
So… Did AI Kill Art?
No.
It exposed the difference between image-making and art-making.
It forced us to ask deeper questions:
Why do we create?
What makes a work authentic?
What does the human hand still do best?
What is the future of beauty, mystery, and soul in a digital world?
And those who lean in—who experiment, question, hybridize, evolve—
Will not be replaced.
They’ll lead.
My Prediction:
AI won’t destroy painting.
It will ignite a renaissance.
People will crave the visceral, the imperfect, the hand-touched, the spiritually charged.
They will crave art that breathes.
And the artists who embrace BOTH—
the ancient and the futuristic, the handmade and the hyper-digital—will define the next era.
I intend to be one of them.
Maybe you do, too.
“Developed through a collaborative process between the artist and AI (ChatGPT), then refined through personal editing and intuition.”