New Life in Old Art

Artist Reflection

Most of my life, art was where I felt most connected to myself through photography, painting, and the emotional processing that naturally happened whenever I created. But more than fifteen years ago, that connection faded. Responsibilities took priority, my confidence slowly diminished, and eventually I walked away from art entirely. I convinced myself that the creative instinct I once had was gone. Returning to art felt intimidating not because I doubted my technical ability, but because it required confronting vulnerable parts of myself I had avoided for years.

When artificial intelligence began emerging as a creative tool, I struggled to understand what it meant for the future of art. Our class discussions on AI’s impact questions about authorship, ownership, authenticity, labor displacement, and the ethics of machine learning—mirrored many of my own internal conflicts. However, instead of distancing me from art, AI reopened a door I thought I had permanently closed. It became an unexpected bridge that allowed me to reconnect with the craft I had abandoned and, in many ways, to reconnect with my own identity.

My creative process begins with my past work: photographs I shot years ago and hand-painted images made during a time when art felt instinctive. These original pieces carry my history how I saw light, emotion, texture, and form during different stages of my life. In Midjourney, I combine these images with carefully constructed prompts shaped by intention, memory, and imagination. The AI does not replace my creative decisions; it responds to them. Rather than generating something unrelated, it becomes a collaborator that extends my ideas into new possibilities. This hybrid authorship process allows my earlier work to evolve while still maintaining a clear human foundation.

Hybrid authorship is central to my concept. It is not about allowing AI to produce work “instead” of me, nor is it about treating the machine as an autonomous artist. Instead, it is about merging human creativity—my emotions, my visual history, my choices with machine intelligence that can transform, remix, and expand those ideas. The result is a form of co-creation where neither the human nor the machine stands alone; creativity emerges from their interaction. This directly connects to course themes about shifting definitions of authorship, agency, and originality in the age of AI.

The images I produced blend abstract forms, nature based symbolism, and emotional metaphor. They are not meant to be literal scenes but representations of internal states healing, transformation, reconnection, uncertainty, and growth. By using my own archival material as the foundation, the artwork becomes a visual record of how memory and emotion can evolve through technology. This process allowed me to express ideas I carried for years but did not have the tools or the emotional readiness—to articulate.

Our course discussions on ethical concerns also shaped how I approached the project. We talked about dataset bias, transparency, consent, and the ways AI tools often utilize millions of images scraped without artists’ permission. Using my own photographs and paintings was an intentional decision to address these concerns. I wanted my work to model an ethical approach to AI art one that respects creative labor, acknowledges the sources that feed the model, and uses personal material to avoid contributing to exploitative data practices.

Through this project, I realized that creativity does not disappear; it waits. Working with AI allowed me to reconnect with my younger artistic self and to see my earlier work from a new perspective. It helped me recognize the emotional truth embedded in my old images and gave me the ability to build from them rather than abandon them. This aligns with course themes on how AI is reshaping human labor—not by eliminating creativity, but by changing how we access, refine, and reinterpret it.

This project is deeply personal, but it also reflects broader cultural questions: How do we maintain human authorship in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent systems? What does it mean to create ethically? How can technology support rather than diminish human expression? My project suggests that AI can expand creativity rather than threaten it when used intentionally, consciously, and collaboratively.

Ultimately, this work represents a return to something I loved and a transformation of what that love can look like today. It shows that creativity is adaptable, that hybrid authorship can honor both the human and the machine, and that technology can help revive parts of ourselves we believed were lost. This project exemplifies how AI, when approached critically and ethically, can open new pathways for artistic expression rather than close them.