2025, Zombies in the Rearview Mirror

AI vs An Artist

As I sit in the peace of the way-too-early-morning hours at my kitchen table, I am reviewing some of the past year’s projects and contemplating next year's ambitions. My mind scrolls over the lessons learned and the changes I would make for the coming year. I have some lofty goals I’ve set for myself, but I am certain I will, at the very least, take a massive bite out of and chew on throughout the course of 2026.

My life’s mosaic is one giant messy art piece in process. Some areas have been overworked, and others I have dialled in just right, and I don’t want to tinker with it any further and lose the beautiful thing it has become.  This year’s creative process has been so rewarding and freeing, despite the many frustrating moments.  Overall, I am proud of my progress. 

Sometimes my art really mimics life, and other times it reveals my life.  My revelation this year is that it’s mostly a good idea to refine more and more until I’m truly happy with it. The fear of overdoing it often leaves me regretting not pushing through the annoying mess I tend to make along the way.  What do I mean by this?  Well, let’s use an analogy from painting. Often, when I'm in the middle of painting something, I start to question whether I have made a giant mess of something that looked so good.  My fear of ruining a good thing has me pausing, stopping, and backing off. I can get hung up on the blemish, the oddity I made, and as I try to fix it, it gets worse…for a little bit. There really aren’t mistakes in the creative process, and I think, as an artist who has worked in many structured environments where creativity was stifled, I have been trained to stop everything and start from scratch. Art is not like that. It flows and evolves. Even the most structured pieces of art need flow and flexibility. That flow comes from some very messy, seemingly disastrous moments. Learning how to relax into the messy to reorder and reimagine something new from that is where all my best work comes from. 

I think about how the future of AI is ever pressing against the gates of creative people’s spaces, like a gang of zombies. It's easy to get caught up in the hype and fear that “it's going to take over everything,” including the artists’. I really don’t get stuck in that loop of thinking. I know that AI can replicate really well and “imagine” something different from something old; however, it can’t have a life, specifically my life and all the messy lessons I have or the curiosity I possess and filter them through my complex, creative, personal and unique life experience. Zombies are coming for brains, but they will never produce and replicate me. This is where my art mimics my life, and I can’t be taught to anything or anyone. 

My rearview mirror is often out of focus and only there for a moment as the goals in the future landscape come into focus. Reviewing the lessons learned is more cemented in my memory if I give them a few glances in my rearview mirror. I refine my process, change my practices slightly, and when I hit some bumps in the road on my next project, hopefully the mess won't feel so disorienting, and I can go with the flow, push past the uncomfortable, ignore the zombies at the gate and hone it into something I am proud of.’ 

***If it wasn't clear, the zombies are my reference to the people who aren't thinking about the things they design anymore and relying too heavily on AI because they want or need something fast and easy, transforming an artist's space into a zombie wasteland.