‘NoMansLand – Re-constructions of the Artist as a Young Human (2023-)’ is a new mixed media collection of work where I explore boundaries and reevaluate my own artistic viewpoint and process.

By feeding my past works into AI, I deconstruct it, allowing me to view it through a new lens. Shifting the focus and examining it in a new context. I rework the results of the AI into a new and original artwork through digital manipulation, print and paint. An AI assisted collaboration between my current and former self. 

This selection of works is part of a bigger world, ‘NoMansLand’, where the subjects of the portraits exist in the intersection between art and technology. They represent my own experience being part of the Xennial micro-generation. The generation with the analogue childhood and digital adulthood. 

I find AI fascinating, as in a very short period of time it went from being fun and exciting, to creating mass contempt and fear of the loss of income, plagiarism, security and artistic integrity. 

I choose to use AI in this collection as it lets me see my work from a different perspective. It influences my decision process, while I still maintain and assert artistic control. It allows me the privilege of exploring freely without my historic artistic bias and boundaries while utilising the technology as a vehicle rather than a destination. To me, AI is a tool, and technology only has the power we choose to give it. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it is human authority that directs it.

The name of the collection is a reference to ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ a title both used by Rembrandt and James Joyce. Both artists work use self reflection as experimentation and pushed boundaries within their respective fields using modern techniques to further their artistic outputs.