My Journey: From Lens to AI, Bridging Art History with the Subconscious
My art delves into the evocative space where the tangible world meets the subconscious, giving new life to forgotten narratives. As a fine art photographer and visual artist, I transform my extensive archive of lens-based captures – particularly those of abandoned landscapes, industrial decay, and the profound beauty of rusting objects – into deeply layered, AI-enhanced digital artworks. My process is one of creative alchemy, using tools like Midjourney to unveil hidden stories and infuse new meaning into the romantic patina of the past.
My artistic foundation was laid in childhood, surrounded by art books and guided by my mother, a 30-year high school art teacher. I’ve been an illustrator and painter for as long as I can remember, constantly drawing cars, houses, and landscapes. This early immersion, coupled with my father’s career in psychology, cultivated my fascination with the interplay between reality and the subconscious – a central theme in my work. My formal education in Visual Arts from the New England School of Art and Design further broadened my perspective, encompassing everything from oil painting and sculpture to art history and color theory.
Today, my passion finds its voice in infusing my photography with elements of Surrealism, Photorealism, Trompe-l’œil, and the profound contrasts of Chiaroscuro. I’m particularly drawn to the mysterious undertones found in artists like Degas, Magritte, Dali, Klee, Max Ernst, and Edvard Munch, allowing their spirit to guide my digital transformations. My love for the beauty of decay – the soulful romance of rusting vintage cars, for instance – is a recurring motif that I push further through AI, often evoking a sense of post-minimalist introspection or cubist fragmentation. I’m also deeply inspired by contemporary sculptors like Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp, constantly exploring how form and texture can transcend the traditional.
My distinctive process involves selecting my own original photographs, then collaborating with AI not as a replacement for creativity, but as an extension of my artistic hand. This allows me to explore new dimensions of texture, form, and narrative, constantly tweaking prompts, weights, and parameters as AI technology rapidly evolves. This method allows me to craft pieces that are both deeply personal and universally resonant, exemplified by series like my ongoing juxtaposition of old rusting cars with ‘whale falls’ – a project cultivated through intensive courses at the Griffin Museum of Photography. My work has also benefited from professional portfolio reviews and one-on-one sessions with prominent artists and visual narrators.
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What does this mean for my art and I?
It’s just another channel through which to make art.
It’s the Wild West – unregulated, unmanaged.. and so wildly fun to be a part of!
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Sure, I’d like to somewhat stay relevant, but really, it’s just cool.
The more realistically I could capture a scene or moment, the less fun it became. So I started experimenting… with filters, lenses, prisms, more lenses, cameras, venues…
And then in early 2023, I found MidJourney – which is the AI platform that I use to make my images.
To this point in mid-2025, I have generated more than 20,000 images. Of those, probably around 100 images were generated WITHOUT using my photographs. They were naked – or just prompts consisting of words.
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Without using my photographs as a basis, I floundered without direction and feel. I had NO CONTROL over where I wanted to take the generated art.
It would be disheartening and rob my artistic bandwidth for some period of time afterwards.
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I keep all of my prompts in Word documents (I am not organized enough or need the scalability to go to Excel for these pre-script options that I have spent months cultivating).
Each output produces 4 different panels/scenes. Chances are that I do not like the first couple of batches – so I make tweaks to either the prompts or the photo.
Once I have a scene, or two, that I like, I will re-process with either different prompts or photos.
Sometimes, months go by and I will re-process with either new prompts or using new software updates.
The AI tech is moving so fast that the difference in 6 months produces much different results – requiring total prompt re-do’s.
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As a SPECIFIC example of how I use prompts…
Within the last few years, I have learned, studied, and become licensed in the art of Reiki (life force energy) healing.
With many of my “Zen/Meditative/Yoga” works, I have added the wording “the 963 Hz frequency” (also known as the God frequency) – which is said to be a vibration which enables connection to the Divine and the essence of a spiritual world.
Let’s say I start with one of my photos from visiting Myanmar in 2006.
By adding “963 Hz” in varied weights and forms in a specific character command structure, I could directly add a visual component – which can be a subtle nuance – or a tone-setter – depending on how I control it.
It may produce an amazing profound and beautiful scene – or it may be a total dud that looks horrible.
Say the first few batches yield a nice image – I will either further tweak that image – or take it to the final stage of upscaling. The image that AI produces is a very small one – so to increase the quality – and to make it so the image is printable – it has to be upscaled – and this is done through a separate AI software platform.
Once I have an upscaled AI enhanced/generated image, I will then edit in either Lightroom or Photoshop.
Generally, I blend many different narratives or prompts – though this example is only one.
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