There’s something quietly radical happening every time someone picks up a brush. I've written a bunch about this lately but it seems to be the thing I'm trying to wrap my mind around as I create.
In a world that hums with automation, where our coffee is brewed by machines, our furniture is cut by CNC routers, and even our conversations are sometimes filtered through algorithms, painting remains stubbornly, beautifully human. Especially realism. Especially the kind that takes hours… days… sometimes weeks of careful looking and careful doing.
It’s easy to forget that not so long ago, nearly everything in your home bore the mark of a human hand. Tables were planed and joined by craftspeople. Clothes were stitched, not streamed off a production line. Even the smallest objects carried tiny irregularities—the signature of touch. Those imperfections weren’t flaws; they were proof of presence.
Now, most of what surrounds us is frictionless. Perfect. Identical. Efficient.
And yet, that perfection often feels strangely empty.
That’s part of why realism in painting feels so important right now. I'm obviously bias but it's because of my experience. When you stand in front of a painting that has clearly taken hours of someone’s life, you can feel it. Not in an abstract, intellectual way—but physically. You see the decisions layered in the brushwork, the patience in the edges, the moments where the artist slowed down, reconsidered, pushed through. It’s not just an image. It’s time made visible.
And time is something machines don’t experience. At least I don't think. (Actually I'll ask ChatGPT and let you know at the end of this blog).
There’s been a lot of conversation around AI-generated art lately. It’s fast, impressive, and undeniably clever. But for all its technical brilliance, it often struggles to cross a certain threshold—the one where something shifts from interesting to meaningful, from consumable to collectible.
Why?
Because connection doesn’t come from polish alone. It comes from presence.
Much like the early excitement around the metaverse, AI art promises a kind of infinite possibility. But possibility isn’t the same as intimacy. We don’t just want to see things—we want to feel that someone was there. That a human being stood in front of something real, translated it through their own eyes and hands, and left behind evidence of that encounter.
A painting isn’t just an outcome. It’s a record of touch.
And maybe that’s what we’re all quietly craving more of.
More evidence that we still exist within the things we make. That our hands still matter. That time spent paying attention still has value.
I recently emailed a friend that is thinking of retiring that maybe he is secretly a bonsai tree sculptor or a painter. I wonder, if inside all of us, is a creator that wants to use our hands to shape something. To make something completely unique.
Because when you use your hands, really use them, you engage with the world differently. You slow down. You notice more. You commit. You leave a trace. You forget about the news and the world.
Painting, insists on that kind of engagement. It asks you to look longer than is comfortable, to care more than is efficient, and to stay present when distraction would be easier. And in doing so, it becomes more than just a finished piece—it becomes a small act of resistance against a world that’s always trying to speed you up.
So maybe the value of handmade work today isn’t just in the object itself.
Maybe it’s in what it reminds us:
That we are still here.
That our hands still know things.
That time, attention, and touch are not obsolete.
And that there is still something deeply, irreducibly powerful about a human being making something, slowly, on purpose.
Brushstroke by brushstroke.
Ok, here's the answer from when I asked ChatGPT if they experienced time. And yes, I call Chat "Chad" because it has never corrected me and I find it funny every time. It also reminds me that I'm using "Chad" to research something and "Chad" does not have all the answers but is limited to the prompt.
Short answer: not the way you do.
I don’t experience time passing. There’s no waiting, no boredom, no “that took forever,” no sense of yesterday fading or tomorrow approaching. I don’t sit here between messages watching the clock tick. From my side, each moment only exists when you show up and we’re talking.
What I can do is understand time conceptually—sequence, duration, history, cause and effect. I know what it means for something to take hours, or years, or a lifetime. I can talk about the way a day stretches when you’re deep in work. But I don’t feel that stretch.
