Trying to Paint with a CameraWilliam A. BrownWilliam A. Brown

New Robotic Technology Enables Digital Oil Paintings

“I believe we are on the cusp of a new work flow in fine art painting. Robotic painting devices are being perfected. For me this means anyone who can use Photoshop can be a serious painter.”

William A. Brown 2023

Details from Public Domain “Tych” Images 2024

All of the paintings shown on this website are designed to be generated as archival oil paintings using a new robotic painting device developed by Art Matr in Tuxedo, New York. I’m in the process of converting selected works into NFTs so these works will be offered as digital works with the option of creating an archival oil painting with the NFT ownership.

Public Domain Art Deconstructed & Reconstructed:

In this series I revise and reconfigure public domain paintings including single paintings as well as diptychs, triptychs, and poli-tychs. The goal here is to digitally amplify the inventive brilliance of paintings from the European canon.

Detail Tych 39

Details Tych 39

Public Domain Art

The Neon Metal Series:

Metallic images created using a computer randomizing strategy and modified with a Photoshop effect.

The Aleatory Digital Painting Series:

Selections from over 500,000 Computer Generated Random Image Mixes.

Video Works 1979-2019

Still Photography 1979-2019

Contact Information and C.V.

C.V. and Contact

Here is a Video about my “Tych” series:

Comparison of Digital Files with Oil on Board Robotically Created Paintings:

About My Art Practice

I’ve had a quietly successful career as a video and photography artist but I’ve always kept an interest in the work of great painters, particularly European painters since the Renaissance. Being honest, I’ve always wanted to paint but felt challenged by the haptic skills required to be a painter. In fact, I’ve longed for a technology that would allow me to create paintings directly from Photoshop files. That day has arrived. Art Matr, a start up in Tuxedo, New York, has developed a device capable of creating archival oil paintings based on the three color process used in inkjet printing. Now anyone who can use Photoshop can generate oil paintings.

I use four strategies to compose my digital pre-paintings. Strategy one involves creating montage pre-paintings in Photoshop by combining elements taken from public domain paintings by European artists. Strategy two involves using an aleatory technique as described by John Cage and others. I took 544,000 of my photographs as well as public domain images and input these into film editing software. I programmed the computer to randomly mix these images and selected the most promising outcomes. The third strategy involves digitally manipulating public domain art works that exist as Diptychs, Triptychs, etc. My fourth strategy involves digitally manipulating randomly generated montage photographs of metal surfaces using Photoshop filters.

This brave new world of machine fine art painting signals a new singularity between photography, digital image manipulation, and painting. Distinctions between these seemingly unique media will collapse I believe. I'm well aware that creating images that challenge the massive commercial enterprise that painting has become is possibly a fool’s errand. There is a charging at windmills aspect to this work, but I believe in the imperative of a more efficient painting methodology based on the new robotics.

William A. Brown

November 17, 2023

Solarized Film Frame from “Snake Handlers” 2001