Something Inside Slipping Over the Edge (Issue #26)

An interview with artist Introvoid

“Ignition” (Introvoid image)

1/1: Please introduce yourself.

Introvoid: Hello, I’m Introvoid. Or Intro for short. I’m a 31-year-old artist from the U.K. with a background in painting. I’ve been exploring digital painting since 2016 and doing the same with artificial intelligence for a few years now. I hope to create artworks that speak of the human experience in this unique moment we are living in.

1/1: What art have you been working on lately?

Introvoid: I started off in the online art community creating and sharing portraits. I find the human face can represent so much of our lived experience. It’s been a while since I solely focused on portraits, more recently having made many expanded figurative scenes. But lately, I’ve been creating a series of new portraits behind the scenes that I hope to release soon.

1/1: Can you describe your workspace/studio and how it influences your art?

Introvoid: Part of the reason I make digital art is because it’s an accessible medium that requires very little space. Currently, my workspace is just a MacBook that’s in my lap wherever I may be. Having a dedicated space for making art has always been my dream, but for now, I don’t have the means for it. I hope to build up to that in the future, coming from any success I can find with the art that I create.

“Reveries: Legacy #50” (Introvoid image)

1/1: What tools do you use?

Introvoid: My MacBook Pro is the engine that keeps my art going. It is a device I was able to get thankfully because of all the collectors who have supported me since late 2021 when I started creating NFTs. For years, I dreamed of owning a powerful computer with the only purpose of creating art but it was never something I could afford until creating NFTs. When I was starting out, I was making art on an old laptop that ran incredibly slowly and crashed all the time.

1/1: Do you work with any special devices or tools unique to your creative process?

Introvoid: While my practice has evolved to use devices such as a pen tablet, this is more for ease of use than anything. Everything I do can be achieved with a finger on a laptop trackpad with years of experimentation. For digital painting and composing my work, Photoshop is my tool of choice as it’s so good with layering. I use a little Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to have some AI in my workflow and get inspiration as well as textures to sample and collage. Texturing and layering are aspects I work hard on. I come from a painting background, so texture means a lot to me when it comes to how a feeling can arise through an artwork. Working digitally is a challenge in this regard. I always want to have my work feel tactile as if it were a painting. The challenge of trying to inject that into the 2D digital medium leads to a lot of experimentation and surprises for me, which keeps me engaged and coming back for more.

1/1: How do you approach developing an idea into a finished piece? Can you walk us through your workflow?

“Reveries: Legacy #43” (Introvoid image)

Introvoid: My art develops out of the process of doing. I usually become inspired by artworks I see in the digital feed and get the creative itch to start laying down brushstrokes on my digital canvases.

I see the process of creating art as akin to how sedimentary rocks are formed, through layers of accumulation that take time and pressure to be shaped. In that process, one loads the artwork with experiences, feeling, and ultimately meaning.

1/1: Can you describe a typical day in your artistic practice, including any rituals or habits?

Introvoid: My art comes from instinct rather than habit. A lot of people like to create with music playing in the background, but that has never been my style. My mind won’t roam free in that environment. Instead, I prefer the quiet of the night and will be awake and creating from dusk until dawn. It’s not the healthiest habit, but the art I make would probably be very different if I lived in a more structured way in keeping with the rest of society.

1/1: You have a unique approach to working with AI. It seems very painterly and active. Can you talk to us about how you're using the new AI technology and how it fits into your process?

Introvoid: There is a lot of fear and even hate surrounding AI. It comes from the survival instincts deep in our DNA. The fear of the new. But art dies without evolution, just as all life on Earth would die without it too. This is why I embrace AI: it offers us all a unique opportunity to express something new. With this in mind, I purposefully explore painterly and expressive textures because painting is one of the oldest art forms. I’m bringing together the old and the new. Painting has famously been declared dead for a long time now. A silly idea in my mind and something that was never true. Using AI to create digital paintings is yet another way to keep it alive and evolving in the most contemporary way possible.

“Reveries: Legacy #34” (Introvoid image)

1/1: We immediately noticed references to Francis Bacon in your work. Are there other artists who you also reference in your pieces?

Introvoid: Adrain Ghenie, Christina Quarles, Cecily Brown to name a few. Expressive painters exploring the human condition.

1/1: Are there any specific works of art (music, literature, film, etc.) that inspire or have significant meaning to you in your artistic practice?

Introvoid: I have subtle hints to culture and media all throughout my work as a lot of my inspiration comes from scrolling the timelines on my screen. It's almost impossible to point to just a few examples. Technology and its effect on the human experience is a central theme I explore in my art. The internet has expanded the ability for all of us to connect, consume and build culture together. It has given rise to things like meme culture and independent content that fosters communities unbound by things like borders or timezones. In one moment, I can be watching a YouTube movie review on my phone, and in the next, I can be playing a videogame that transports me to another world. Everything in history and media gets mixed together now when experienced in this way. I was part of the first generation to grow up with the internet, forming as a person with its monumental and encompassing influence. In a way, I identify as a digital native more than anything else, and I feel this inevitably comes though in my art.

“Reveries: Legacy #33” (Introvoid image)

1/1: How do you come up with titles for your work?

Introvoid: Titling my art is possibly the hardest aspect for me in the creative process. It often comes at the very end of making a work and after deep reflection. It’s a delicate thing as the imagery of my art is suggestive rather than illustrative or narrative. Titles can be a cage one places around the art if they are too distinct and defining and/or final.

1/1: What draws you to NFTs and do you see them as different from traditional art markets?

Introvoid: The biggest thing they have going for them is they are open to anyone. There are few barriers to entry as either an artist or a collector. This is especially the case with Tezos due to the low gas fees.

1/1: For someone just getting into art/NFTs, what advice would you offer?

Introvoid: It took me a while to pluck up the courage to start minting NFTs, and I wish I had done it sooner. So my main advice is to not let fear get in your way. This is a space for experimentation, development, and connection, so get talking to and sharing with people in the community. Being an artist here is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows that you should embrace as there are unique opportunities and surprises that come with each day.

1/1: Who are some of your favorite artists in the NFT space?

Introvoid: Norman Harman, Phosphor, Mashine, Isolationist, Ilya Shkipin, 0x3y3.

1/1: What are you working on next?

Introvoid: Continuing that portrait series I mentioned. I’m creating collages and digital paintings, then transforming them using AI to become even more painterly and expressive.

1/1: Could you show us some of your favorite work and tell us what it means to you?

“What will we be?” (Introvoid image)

Introvoid: My very first NFT is very simple compared to all that has followed. But in that simplicity is the essence of what I practice and think about everyday through my art. It’s titled “What will we be?” It’s a swirling portrait of transformation. I gave it a description that can also serve as a thesis behind all of my artworks:

“We transform every day, as all things do, in a constant state of motion. Even when still, our hearts beat and our blood pumps. We can lay our heads to rest at night and put pause to everything, but the earth we call home will continue to shoot through space. Spinning around a giant burning ball of plasma.

All things are moving; all things are transforming.

We break down and build up again. Our cells become phoenixes living through a cycle of death and rebirth. In a decade your body as it is now will be completely replaced. Moving through time as time moves through us. In this, we become less of what we were, and more of what we will be.

What will we be when that star swallows us whole?

What will we be when tomorrow is today?”

1/1: We commissioned a piece, "Something Inside Slipping Over the Edge." Could you tell us about it?

“Something Inside Slipping Over the Edge” (Introvoid image)

Introvoid: My starting point for this was being inspired by Francis Bacon’s ‘‘Painting, 1980.” Some people look at Bacon’s work as dark and scary but that’s the furthest thing from my view. Bacon cuts open and exposes human emotion with the brilliance of color, texture, and form. That orange he uses in his painting is electric and radiant. A perfect setting compositionally and structurally to juxtapose human figures in their organic nature. Nature set against artifice. This tension between the figure and the space ignites my brain, and I hope to explore it in my art.

The people who inhabit my artwork are created with varied techniques that break down the natural state of the body into a digitized state. Rendered and distorted sections are built up again in a layered method, much like a painting with brush stroke after brush stroke. The way figures can twist and transform is endless in art. It’s beautiful and moving to see, but to what end? For me, these figures who are never fixed in perfection or even realism speak of our inner worlds. This kind of art shows humanity inside-out, not literally with blood and guts, but figuratively, with color, and transformed shapes that depict deep emotions vibrating through the body.

That orange Bacon used has an artificiality you never see in paintings before the modern era. My figures spill out from this color and the space Bacon created in his painting. They slip into another level of artificiality through digital painting, creating a digital realm that expands outwards like unfolding pages in a concertina sketchbook. This work speaks of living in this moment with all this technology and information at our fingertips. It’s a transformative time—beguiling and enthralling—but also confusing and stressful as we are overloaded and distracted. Just as Bacon's orange spoke of modern times, through my choice of digital effects,  I hope to speak of contemporary life and how it affects and changes us.

“Reveries: Legacy #37” (Introvoid image)