about the artist

MY STORY

Most people do not know that I had been very involved in the development of digital painting tools. When I was young I took computer engineering courses during the day and went to art school at night. Soon after my education, I moved to Silicon Valley to work in the tech industry. I consulted with big companies like Adobe, Macromedia, Maxon, NewTek, Corel, and a few others, to help develop their paint programs, some from the very first version. A lot of my artwork was on the packaging for those products in the early years. The tools people use today like Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and Cinema 4D, I had a hand in developing. It's one of the few things I am proud of accomplishing. I had a great life doing work I was proud of and my future looked bright. I worked in the tech world during the day, and painted at night, not so different than my younger years, but my life would take a sharp turn after that.

In the early 2000s I began to get ill and almost died because doctors had no idea what was going on. I ended up losing almost a decade before I somewhat recovered. My ability to paint and to see images in my mind the way I used to was gone, due to what turned out to be a mold infection in my body and brain. This is why I switched to painting with digital tools originally, because I was bedridden for a long time, and it gave me some way to gain back some of what I lost. I looked at it as a chance to see if the tools I helped develop actually worked. I started to develop my own tools and workflows so I could achieve similar results to my real paintings. Over time I was able to use real materials again, but I still had a lot of issues that the digital tools helped me with. One big one is these sorts of infections lessen your ability to see contrast and tones in color. It's one of the tests they give you to find out how badly it affects you — it's called the Visual Contrast Sensitivity (VCS) test, tied specifically to mold illness and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). You can find it at www.VCSTest.com. There was a deep sorrow in my soul when they were explaining the test to me, realizing that this loss would be devastating to a painter. Sure enough, I had been struck with this affliction. I fell into a deep depression, no longer able to see the images and worlds in my mind, or paint them reliably. Even the digital tools couldn't pull me out of it then, and I gave up on art for almost a decade.

During this time I went all in on tech, started a computer repair company, and later an online marketplace for computer parts and components as an extension. I found another way to live, not the way I had planned, but it was a good life if art was not possible. A lot of time passed, and I realized I was slowly starting to feel like something was missing from my life. I was still dealing with my illness on a daily basis, it never really goes away, but now I was on a treatment plan — not drugs, I'm not a fan of drugs, and there were some horrible stories online of people who went aggressive at it with strong drugs. I took the natural route, which takes longer but is much safer. Some of the people in my recovery group didn't make it, and others chose to end their own life. It was a scary time for me, but the one thing I always had going for me was my optimism and hopefulness. Some say I am optimistic to a fault — when I get bad news from my doctor I just shrug it off even when the odds are against me. I refused to accept that this could beat me, or take away my love for life.

If I felt sick I went out into nature and just sat in the grass trying to become one with it, and I always felt like nature was actually trying to heal me. I think that is a huge problem with modern health facilities — they are so far from nature and real life that they feel like they promote death. I wanted no part of it, so I started looking into alternative and Eastern medicine. I found a few great doctors that really made a difference in my life and health. I got very into functional medicine, so much so that I studied all the materials that doctors need to get licensed. With all this natural recovery, and getting back to nature, I was starting to feel this pull towards art again. I knew I still had my limitations, so if I was going to try again, I would need to find solutions to my weaknesses, and there were some big ones. How do I get past the visual tonal range issues, or deal with the harsh chemicals from the materials, with CIRS?

After several attempts with more natural materials like water-mixable oil paints and non-toxic thinners and the like, I had to stop and admit it wasn't going to happen. So at that time, I decided to get more into photography and worked with digital tools out of necessity. The vision of what I wanted to make had always stayed the same, it was just how I got there that was different. I still had to decide what tone, color, and brushstrokes went where, only now I could do so without dealing with the materials and chemicals making me sick when I wasn't feeling well. Which meant I could keep working no matter what. I used photographs to map the tones I couldn't see. I used 3D programs to help visualize what I used to see in my mind, with the help of some clever random generator nodes that allowed me to randomize my custom-built landscape environments. I just kept building my tool set to cover every weakness. I even used word generators to combine words I defined that could help with subject matter and concepts. I just kept going until I had a system in place to do what I loved to do.

In 2014 I decided to join the art world again. The landscape had changed. It had been almost a decade since I'd thought about art. Since a lot of what I was doing was digital, I looked into communities revolving around it and settled on DeviantArt, which was very popular at the time. I created an account and started uploading some images for feedback, and I got a warm welcome and a decent following right away. I felt like I needed to do more to get some traction and prove my system worked. So I announced a challenge to all my followers and artist friends on the platform: 100 images in 10 days. It was a pretty difficult challenge, but a few people agreed to it. A few dropped out because they couldn't keep up due to school or work. But a few of us made it through. The results ended up better than I could have hoped. I generated a few new styles to help deal with the time constraints. Several of the images ended up finalists in contests on the platform, and one won! This showed me that it was possible to return, and that I could still do good work even with my limitations. So I continued to work on my system and tools for years, eventually creating my Facebook page, and then the Lonnie Christopher Art website, Fine Art America page, and so on.

I didn't know if this process would ever work or be respected the way my traditional art was, and perhaps it shouldn't, but I needed a way to get through my ordeal, and this did that for me, and it continues to let me create my vision of the world. I doubt I'll ever go back to physical painting, even though I love and miss it. I just feel like it is not in the cards for me, and the universe is clearly pushing me in another direction.

These days I do not paint that much. I moved more into the creative/art direction field because of the knowledge and experience I've gathered over the years — I think this is a good third chapter for me, given my health and abilities at this point. Any work that I do now, I consider graphic design, and I consider myself more of a designer of art than an actual artist, since a lot of it is compositing. As you can imagine, AI plays a very big role in my life now. I felt obligated, as someone with my background in both art and technology, to be at the forefront of its design, to help steer it in the right direction as a tool for creatives, and not a replacement — and I'm happy with the direction the major companies are going.

It's been a long journey. I sold my first piece of art at 17, and in a lot of ways that is what I've been chasing all along — creating something in the world that could possibly help someone the way it helped me to create it. Long before I understood what I was becoming, through life's changes there was always that need to create something, no matter what medium or platform, the desire to share something with the world, a part of me that others might relate to. That thread is still alive in me today. No matter if I am starting a company, building systems, or creating art, that same instinct for connection is there — the one I'd first felt selling that early piece. Now I find myself combining all of it — the art, the technology, the years of building things — into new projects and work that I am proud of.

Stay strong, Lonnie Christopher