Artists Forgetting Their Power Is
Artists being afraid of new technology isn’t new. We’ve been here more times than people want to admit.
When paint was literally pulled from the earth, that was considered the “real” way to work; then oil painting arrived. It looked like cheating. If you didn’t grind your own pigment and get clay under your fingernails, were you even an artist? It took centuries for people to stop arguing and use the tool.
Industrial paint production hit next. Synthetic pigments flooded the market. The traditionalists called them vulgar. Sound familiar?
Then came the collapsible paint tube. Nobody hated the tube itself. They hated what came inside it. Artists complained the paint wasn’t “pure” or “handmade” enough. The pattern keeps repeating.
Photography showed up in the 1800s and shook the whole foundation of painting. A device could capture reality faster and cleaner than any painter. Critics called it “the mortal enemy of art.” Painters either adapted or became historical footnotes. The ones who stayed around did it by changing how they painted, not by trying to beat the camera at its own game.
Duchamp dropped a urinal in a gallery in 1917 and forced the entire field to admit that ideas matter just as much as execution. People hated him for it. Conceptual art exists today because one guy said, “What if art isn’t what you think it is?”
Acrylic paint was considered cheap and plastic. Today it’s standard.
Digital took even more heat. Early computer graphics were mocked. “Cold.” “Sterile.” “Not real art.” The minute artists got tablets and styluses, we turned the whole thing on its head again. But not before years of resistance, accusations of cheating, and a lot of hand-wringing about what’s “real.”
And even now, people still yell, “If it’s digital, it doesn’t count.” Some folks act like using a mouse or code erases the artist’s hand.
Every wave follows the same script. The new tool arrives. Artists complain. Artists adapt. Artists create something new. The field expands. Then something else shows up.
AI is our latest version of this same anxiety.
And yes, we have a legitimate grievance this time. AI scraped from artists without consent or compensation. I’m angry right along with you. But pretending we can shove AI back in the bottle isn’t realistic. The horse didn’t just leave the barn. It galloped across three counties.
I’m working on something that may help, but even that will be a bandage, not a cure. The damage is done. So the real question becomes: what now?
When you look at the history of every single art upheaval, we adapt. We create something that didn’t exist before. That’s our actual superpower, not the brush, tablet, or software. Us.
So when I hear “AI is going to take my job,” I can’t accept that.
AI isn’t going to take your job. A person who learns how to use AI will take your job.
If you sit in your puddle of fear and hate, someone else will make the leap you refused to make. That’s the part artists don’t want to hear, but it’s the truth.
We’ve always thrived when we stop guarding the old gate and start building new doors.
In the 1990s, the artists who were on the bleeding edge hijacked the only software available and bent it to their will. That software was “Ye Olde Photoshoppe.” Photoshop was created for photographers to retouch photos, but look what we artists did! We perverted its Prime Directive to suit our own needs.
From here on out, I want to show you how to use AI as an ally instead of a rival, how to let it handle the boring work so you can get back to the real work. The creative work. The part only we can do.
If you’re open to it, stick around. I’ll walk you through how artists can use AI in ways that strengthen, not replace, what we do. Leave your comments and questions. We’ll navigate this together.
Just create™
Note* I used AI for this infographic because I was never good at putting these together. Let’s let it do something I don’t want to do. No one’s paying me for it.
