I wrote a short post on Linkedin about AI last week.

I’m generally - deeply - sceptical about AI. As a technology it may have value, but I think we’re ignoring the price it’s asking us to pay. I think we’re being sold junk experiences which diminish us, their essential toxicity hidden behind either ‘isn’t this exciting, it’s new!’ or ‘here’s a way for you to make more money’.

I see much of what we’re offered as ‘AI’ as a scam, designed primarily to enrich hucksters and frauds.

These pigments are of the earth.

They are rock, and I enhance them with inks I have made from soil and flower.

This is where we live.

This is where we cannot live without.

It’s useful to me, as I make work, to remember that once, a few thousand years back (and still today in other cultures than the one I grew up in), the role of art was also to heal and to build community.

I’m not making huge claims for my art. I’m making huge claims for art.

Art making and art-encountering is fundamental to our humanity - it heals us, connects us and entertains us.

It’s not my job as an artist to try to do these things. I make art and trust that Art will do what Art can do.

A few years ago I started calling my work ‘The Art of Calm’.

There were two reasons. Working with ink needs me to be calm. The ink knows when I’m rushing, distracted, or disturbed. It reflects my tensions back to me.

The second reason …

The project I just finished was in a very diverse, multicultural school, working with 11-year olds. Some were recent arrivals in Ireland, some from disrupted or traumatic backgrounds. Others carried the complex experience of living in relative poverty in an affluent culture.

It had the potential to be difficult, disruptive and confrontational. This risk was enhanced by the continuing thrum of racist rhetoric from flag-waving hypocrites at the national and social media levels - a thrum that recently burst into violent flames in Belfast, with Musk-inspired racists trying to burn ‘foreigners’ out of their homes.

Yet the classroom was calm, joyous and beautiful.

Perfection is a myth.

Practice is about putting in place the foundations.

Time I borrow from myself can never be paid back…..

I stepped into the world of the corporate elite.

Here’s why it did not worry me, being there…..