I Am Wherever You Find Me
“I am wherever you find me,” 2024, 60 x 60 cm, oil on canvas
Over the past year, I’ve written about how I began using AI as an ideation tool to generate reference material for my traditional oil paintings. When I first started, image-generation AI technology was still quite new and experimental. At that time, I viewed tools like Midjourney and DALL·E as fascinating digital novelties, additions to my creative toolkit. But how do I feel now, after more than a year of merging my artistic process with machine-generated ideas? Do I still see it as just another technical tool, like Photoshop, or is there more to it? The answer is complicated... let me explain.
In mid-2023, after completing my exhibition Hallucination, I realised there was still much I didn’t fully understand about how this technology was affecting my work. As a painter and ceramic artist, I have always worked in traditional ways. I gather reference materials from my surroundings, personal photographs, and sketches from life to create visual narratives that reflect my feelings. Often, the act of creating releases an emotional response that helps me craft a visual statement to express my mood, capture a memory, or convey a personal opinion. My work aims to communicate my human experience of living in this world.
With the inclusion of AI-generated creativity, my goals as an artist have not changed. I still source images online and in life to create visual responses in the form of paintings or sculptures, just as I did before the introduction of AI. However, one could argue that the AI tools I use to generate reference materials are, controversially, in direct competition with human creativity. If technology can create the imagery I feel compelled to paint, why pick up a brush? Why be creative at all? The simple answer is that AI cannot truly create the images I paint. It cannot physically paint, nor can it articulate experiences or emotions—it has no perceptions, only data-based responses generated on demand.
The Inspiration Behind "I Am Wherever You Find Me"
The painting I am wherever you find me emerged during a period of personal isolation and disconnection. I felt untethered from everyone and everything around me, with so much internal turmoil that it felt like my emotional baggage was morphing into an external suit of armour. During that time, I revisited an image I had previously generated using Midjourney (Figure 1). The image resonated with my sense of isolation, so I asked Midjourney to develop it further. One of the resulting images (Figure 2) aligned perfectly with my feelings of wearing a heavy, unwieldy suit composed of outdated parts. The dangling helmet and gloves on the left, for instance, reminded me of my past work as a graphic designer—skills I occasionally still use but no longer wear like a permanent suit. It felt like I had outgrown that identity, much like a cicada shedding its outer shell.
I started to imagine what this mythological armoured suit might look like. I decided that if I was going to paint out my painful baggage over the coming weeks, I would use a fun, contrasting colour palette to represent the battle-worn, hard metallic armour. I asked Midjourney to reinterpret the images using brightly coloured, bubble-gum tones (Figure 3). The resulting playful yet surreal landscapes added a layer of irony to the heavy emotional theme I was exploring. These candy-coloured images helped me build a visual narrative that reflected my feelings of disconnection.
Figure 3
With a clear idea of the resource material I wanted to use and a strong direction for the piece, I gathered all the generated images, sketches, and notes into Microsoft OneNote (Figure 4). Here, I organised the page into developmental sections: images generated in Midjourney are outlined in green; the blue box contains images merged in a Photoshop file; the pink box is where I began formulating the meaning behind each element I chose to include; and the yellow section shows progress photos as paint began to hit the canvas.
Figure 4
My preliminary notes for this painting (Figure 5) explain the symbolism, colour choices, and composition. I used these notes to create a draft image by merging reference images in Photoshop. The notes detail how I wanted the color to be organized, allowing the eye to rest in less colourful, chaotic parts of the canvas, while remembering that mental chaos was the original intent of this painting. I paid attention to less symbolic areas, such as the clouds in the top left, which work to draw the eye back to the figure. The deliberate placement of the figure was intended to make it appear almost elusive, as though it didn’t really want to be on the canvas. This tension is heightened by small visual details disappearing out of frame, like the ‘thought bubbles’ rising from the figure's helmet. Many details in this work relate to parts of my personal life, anxieties, and feelings of being overwhelmed. In my notes, I also referenced elements like the numerous eyes embedded in the warrior’s helmet, symbolizing how the more I observe this world, the less I understand it.
Figure 5
Reflecting on the Role of AI in My Art
Using AI in this way has allowed me to work more efficiently during the planning stages, freeing up time to immerse myself in the emotional aspects of painting. In large, detailed works, it can be difficult to sustain the raw feelings that first inspired the piece. AI has become a tool that enables me to collaborate with myself, filtering my ideas through a lens that isn’t entirely my own. This process lets me step back from the intensity of my emotions, offering a fresh perspective.
I question the affinity I’ve developed with this technology. As the content of this piece suggests, I’ve been going through a rough patch over the last couple of years. I cannot ignore that the lack of connection I’ve felt recently—finding human communication challenging—may have made machine collaboration inherently more appealing to me.
I don’t believe that AI can articulate my feelings and intentions any better than another human could. What it does offer, is a means for me to collaborate with myself through a filter that is not my own. It allows me to step back from the overwhelmed feelings that sometimes consume me. This may not be the experience other artists have with this technology; I can imagine that someone more connected to their environment might find working with AI too alien or disconnected from their usual creative process.
For now, I choose to engage with AI consciously, using it to deepen my creative exploration. Whether I continue to embrace it as the technology evolves remains to be seen, but for now, it’s a part of my journey.