Self-portrait painted by machines

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Heliodro "Helio" Santos

2024

Plotter Drawing

Painted with a drawing robot.
Oil / canvas paper.
24 x 18 cm
Signed lower left
with accompanying NFT

Description

Paintings executed entirely by robots are rare enough, but they are almost never as detailed or expressive as Self-portrait painted by machines. The gorgeously plotted portrait depicts Heliodoro Santos looking forlornly beyond the frame.

Painted by a plotter with oils on canvas paper, _Self-portrait painted by machines _contrasts the artist’s dark skin with a field of gossamer yellow. Not only is the contrast painterly, the brushstrokes themselves are intensely stylistic, almost pointillistic. We can see every individual decision made by the plotter: streaks of brown and gray on Santos’s shoulder, specks of pink adorning his chicory beard, dark eyes bathed in shadow. These seem more like calculated artistic decisions than mere observations.

Santos’s robot-assisted paintings are otherwise mostly landscapes. Self-portrait painted by machines stands as the only portrait in a body of more than 400 works.