Painting the Machine: Why I’m Using AI in My Traditional Art Practice
‘Don’t Paint What You See’
2024, 30x30cm, oil on canvas
In recent weeks, I’ve been thinking deeply about the role of AI in creative industries—both as a tool and as a threat. Watching Ed Newton-Rex’s TED talk recently – How AI Models Steal Creative Work and What to Do About It, crystallised a lot of what I’ve been grappling with. His words were clear: “Generative AI competes with the work it’s trained on.” The idea that artwork is not just being mimicked, but mined and repackaged is really hard to accept. Over 50,500 creatives have now signed the Statement on AI training, petition demanding an end to the unlicensed scraping of our work. The statement reads:
“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”
I agree with this wholeheartedly, it needs to be addressed.
And yet—I’m using AI.
Not to replace my practice, but to investigate it. To wrestle with what it means for the future of art and artists. I’m using it because I want to understand it. I want to see how it behaves, how it reflects our biases, how it refracts and distorts visual culture like a digital funhouse mirror. I want to test its limits and infuse it with traditional materials like oil paint and clay. To experiment with it as an artist experiments with their environment.
My painting ‘Don’t Paint What You See’, 2024, 30x30cm, oil on canvas, is part of that process. It’s a response to AI not just as a technology, but as a cultural artifact—one that mirrors back our values, our aesthetics, our blind spots. I’m not painting AI literally; I’m painting the idea of it. The anxiety. The seduction. The hollowness. The distraction.
I believe it’s the job of contemporary artists to engage with contemporary issues. AI is one of the biggest ones we’re facing. That means confronting it.
To be clear, I believe artists deserve to be credited and compensated when their work is used to train models. We all deserve transparency and respect. Therefore, while I experiment with AI in my process, I do so critically, cautiously, and with full awareness of the larger ethical stakes.
Art has always wrestled with the tools of its time. Today, AI is one of them. And I plan to keep painting through it, around it, and—when necessary—with it and against it. I guess the aim is to remain human :)