Artist profile

Arick

The Emotional Brush series, New York

For years Arick worked under the name Moriartsy, in a hyper-colored photorealism he called post-modern pop surrealism. During the pandemic he set himself a painting a day, every day, for a year. In 2022 he showed Warholics on Crosby Street in SoHo, paintings based on unreleased photographs of Andy Warhol, and took three awards during Art Basel week in Miami.

Then, by his account, a stranger showed him an image trained by AI on his own paintings, and disappeared into the crowd. If a machine can produce the image, the image was never the valuable part. He changed what he was making.

The Emotional Brush series is abstract, exaggerated and multi-material. The paint sits up off the canvas; the brushstrokes are the subject. In his words, anybody can make an image. His goal is to make it feel like it came from a human hand and a human soul.

Arick, Matriarchal Strength, 2023