Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

The rumours are true. I have been taking a break from pop culture. Okay, I won't lie. I actually took a break for a couple of weeks and then did a pop culture painting that you will see in the coming weeks or months. And I think I"m going to do another pop culture painting this week and probably next week too. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm going to do fewer of them for a while. but I"m still gonna do 'em. So there. To quote Cartman from South Park "I do what I want!" 

Okay, with that out of the way, I wanted to show you a couple more paintings I did based on images generated by the AI program Midjourney. The first of which is now one of my favourite paintings I've ever done. I really feel like this guy captures the spirit of George Condo, better than any of my other paintings. Or at least as well as any of them. George Condo, is of course, one of the main inspirations for my current work.  

^{Untitled (Imaginary Sargent 4), 11" x 14", oil on canvas. Available.}

_{AI generated image used as reference for the painting above.}

So you're probably wondering why I've been doing paintings based on AI images. The fact is, when I started painting in the style I call Cubo-Weirdism, I wanted to paint something that was influenced by George Condo, but not something that directly copied Condo. Condo works entirely out of his head. He never uses any reference. So one of the things that sets me apart from him, is that I do use reference. Pop culture was a great place to go for reference. Plus at it's best, I love pop culture. 

You may be aware that I have made paintings in this style where I do not use reference at all. These are my imagined faces. Whenever I do those, it feels a little like I'm trying to paint like Condo. And when I use reference it feels like I'm doing something different.

You may also remember that I have done paintings based on Rembrandt and Leonardo, and especially John Singer Sargent. I wasn't sure that I wanted to do more of those. Mainly because the subtleties of Sargent's paintings are difficult to see on a photo downloaded from Google images. So I asked Midjourney to generate some fake Sargents. And some fake Anders Zorns, while I was at it. 

I'm not one hundred percent sure how I feel about using AI in my art practice. I will reiterate something I believe I said last week. I'm okay with AI being trained with long dead artists such as Sargent, but I'm not cool with it being trained by living artists. And that is why I will not do any more paintings based on the prompt I used for the image below. "A portrait of a clean shaven middle aged man making a funny face in the style of John Singer Sargent." The image it generated was most certainly inspired (for lack of a better word) by living artists. 

And I went ahead and made the painting because I did like the face that Midjourney generated. But I definitely could have imaged a funny face on my own. So I didn't really need to use this particular AI image. And after thinking about it for a while, I decided it will be the last time I do such a thing! 

^{Untitled (Imaginary Sargent 3), 11" x 14", oil on canvas. Available.}

_{AI generated image used as reference for the painting above.}

Next week I'm going to show you another direction I want to take my art practice and maybe ask you if you'd like to help. See you then!