AI & the artist

I’m sure I’m not the only one struggling with the AI conundrum - to engage or not to engage, and if so - how much? As a career artist and designer I have had to adapt to technology changes over decades, some that made my job harder, some easier. AI is possibly the most challenging. But first a bit of background about how I got here.

My initial training was in the early 80s. 3 years of 5 days a week attendance at what was then Claremont School of Art. 3 years of intensive education and training in art history, several representational drawing sessions a week, sculpture, painting and printmaking. I was taught the lost wax method of bronze casting, welding and there was a lot of life drawing. Some of it was tedious and all of it required a lot of self discipline.

The first major milestone was my rejection of the accepted career path of most 20th C visual artists. It consisted of renting a studio space, buying materials, spending hours and hours creating artworks while you supported yourself financially, paid for framing, hired an art gallery, exhibited, paid for opening night refreshments and promotion, and hoped like hell someone would buy your work.

That seemed like a mug’s game. Artists take all the risk, do all the work and if you managed to get into a commercial gallery, you handed over 30% (now it’s 40-50%) of your ‘profits’. I earnt more from scrimshaw than I ever did selling traditional artworks. Ethical doubts started to creep in - the toxicity of art materials, sustainability and mostly - creating more ‘stuff’ the world didn’t need.

Fast forward to the 2000s and after a convoluted journey, I finally got my teeth into something ‘meaningful’. It took a PhD to make me fully understand that my interest in ‘art’ was never for its own sake. What I was, and still am interested in, is creative thinking and big ideas. When I look back - the visual image has always been a means to an end. I still believe visual communication is the most powerful educational and propaganda tool around.

Moving sideways into graphic design meant a major shift in tools and techniques. My knowledge of the fundamentals of design - colour theory and composition - was invaluable. Many people think effective visual communication is an innate ‘talent’ or serendipity but good design is a measurable science with immutable ‘truths’. There are things that work and things that don’t. You just have to know the language to understand what they are, and how they work. The audience doesn’t need to understand the language to understand what the artist-designer is saying. That’s the beauty of it - it’s subliminal until you analyse it. As my high school art teacher told me way back in the 70s - visual art is the ultimate in ‘chicanery’*. That’s where its power lies. If you are an avowed ‘propaganda’ artist who makes images according to a specific agenda, at some stage you will be confronted with the ethics of what you are ‘selling’.

The realisation that images are one of activism’s best tools was another big step in my evolution. At this point in history - amid climate system collapse, environmental destruction and geo-political chaos - is there anything else really worth doing? (Apart from learning how to grow vegetables maybe). I started calling myself an ‘activist’, using my design experience and overactive creative brain for something that might make a difference, but probably wouldn’t.

During my 45+ year artistic career technology has moved on a hell of a lot. I started using a computer at the age of 41 so the learning curve was exponential, including grappling with digital drawing and design programs. I enjoyed doing graphic design and sometimes got paid for it. Then along came Upwork and Fiverr where, in a global economy, Australians with high living costs compete with designers in emerging economies like India.

Then CANVA gave everyone the ability to design their own business cards and flyers and it was pretty much over for many graphic designers.

So here we are and now we have AI, which is possibly the biggest challenge for creatives yet. It is seductive but it also comes with some serious conundrums. The first is that it can create images for free if you know what to ask for, supposedly saving you hours of work. But are they any good? (More on that another time).

The second is that for a designer - although it can do the grunt work - AI demands that you compromise your principles about original thinking and intellectual property.

The aspect I am grappling with the most though, is AI’s carbon footprint - its use of energy and water, and voracious appetite for infrastructure. It is already having a significant negative impact on the environment.

The efficacy, accuracy and usefulness of all systems ultimately relies on the operator and AI is no different. You have to know how to use it and I know this because I have had some pretty poor results. That’s to be expected because I am learning but this is my first problem. How many emissions will I produce whilst I am learning how to use this new tool? Is the use of AI likely to drive us over the climate change cliff even earlier? How do we manage this new onslaught? Is not using it even an option?

Ok, this is where it gets messy. I adhere to the philosophy: if you don’t adapt, you die. If you can’t keep up with the significant increases in productivity provided by AI you will get left behind. If the first rule of survival is ‘adapt OR die’ then we are now faced with a corrupted version of it: ‘adapt AND die’, or ‘don’t adapt and die anyway’ - which doesn’t seem like a choice at all.

The sad reality is that if I don’t use AI when everyone else is, I am not in a position to ‘compete’. Social media and the market are hungry beasts and time is short. One option is time consuming, and the other is burning the planet. AI is yet another runaway technological train that has effectively robbed us of choice. That’s not liberation - that’s oppression.

* the use of deception or subterfuge to achieve one’s purpose.

Graphic: The Tower of Babble. Michelle Frantom. Hand drawn digital collage.

Most Australians - asleep at the wheel

Most Australians live in the 'lucky country' bubble - a long way from the conflicts happening in the rest of the world. But they are about to find out that our luck has run out. We are already being impacted by what's happening in the Middle East, but that conflict is only part of the picture.

 

Humpty Trumpty

 

I continue to wait impatiently for an end to this degenerate’s dominance of the media and world affairs. I don’t even want to hear his name. So much has been said already so sometimes I create a graphic to express what words alone can’t.

Image: Original vector graphic by author.

Everything is stupid

 

What's the point?

 

I loathe competition sports - either playing or watching them. When my partner is watching a ball game of some description, I have often commented: I just don't see the point. Just give them all a ball and then they won't have to fight for it. I know of course that that is completely missing the point of competition sports, but that's exactly my point - there is no point.

I feel the same about jigsaw puzzles. I accept they are good for some people, they calm the mind and possibly provide some sense of satisfaction - but not for me. Which is why I was delighted to find this random image on the internet. It cracks me up every time I look at it.

"That's what I want to say to Jennifer."

This is long and these are not my words. But they summarise the reality of what is going on with the US in the Middle east so well, I had to share them.

I'm sitting in the carpool line at 3:15 on a Friday afternoon and I'm watching the world fall apart on my phone while "Sweet Home Alabama" plays on my radio and I swear to God I am going to lose my mind.

Brent crude just hit $90. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Dow dropped 900 points. 181 children are dead in Iran. And the President of the United States just posted "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" on Truth Social with a hashtag. MIGA. Make Iran Great Again. Like he's dropping a new merch line. And I'm sitting here in a Chevy Suburban with goldfish crackers ground into the back seat waiting to pick up my kids from a school that looks exactly like the one he just bombed.

And I know, I know, that in about four minutes I'm going to have to stand next to Jennifer at the pickup gate. Jennifer with the "Ultra MAGA Mama Bear" bumper sticker and the Lululemon leggings and the iced coffee and the absolute audacity to call herself pro-life. Jennifer who told me last week that Trump is "finally showing strength in the Middle East." Jennifer who gets her foreign policy from a man who gets his foreign policy from whatever Fox News host he appointed to run the Pentagon this week. Jennifer who couldn't point to Iran on a map if her Botox depended on it but has very strong opinions about what should be bombed there.

And Jennifer is going to say something. She always says something. She can't help herself. She's going to flip her hair and do that little smile, that smug little "bless your heart" smile that Southern women use when they think they're smarter than you, and she's going to say "well at least he's keeping us safe" or "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" or some other bumper sticker bullshit she picked up from her husband's podcast rotation, and I am going to have to stand there and smile because our kids are in the same goddamn soccer team and I can't afford to blow up the only carpool arrangement that works with my schedule.

So I smile at Jennifer. I always smile at Jennifer. Every school pickup, every soccer practice, every birthday party where she corners me near the cooler and tells me I "just don't understand what Trump is really doing." Jennifer, sweetheart, I have a history degree. I understand exactly what he's doing. I understood it before you learned how to spell Iran and I'll understand it long after you've moved on to your next political personality and pretended this one never happened. Because that's what you'll do, Jennifer. That's what you always do. You'll peel that bumper sticker off your Tahoe like you peeled off your "Bush-Cheney '04" one and pretend you were "never really political."

But here's what I want to say to Jennifer. Here's what I'm choking on while I stand there with my school pickup smile and my $78 tank of gas.

Jennifer, 180 children died in a school. A girls' school. On the first day. Someone braided their hair that morning. Someone packed their lunch. Someone said "have a good day sweetheart" and those little girls sat down at their desks with their pencils and their notebooks and their little backpacks and then a bomb that my taxes paid for turned their classroom into a grave. And the man on your bumper sticker put a hashtag on it. You dropped your kids at school this morning, Jennifer. You kissed them goodbye. You told them you loved them. And 180 mothers in Iran did the same thing last week and their daughters came home in bags. Your president did that. Your guy. And you're standing here with an iced coffee telling me he's showing strength.

Jennifer, I used to be a history teacher. I know what happened in Iran in 1953. The CIA overthrew their democracy because American and British oil companies wanted their crude. Installed a puppet. Called it freedom. It led to the Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis, and forty years of chaos. And your guy, Jennifer, your guy is doing the exact same thing. He said on camera he wants to pick Iran's next leader. Said he wants to do what he did in Venezuela, where he kidnapped a sitting president and handed the oil to American companies. He is not even pretending this is about nukes. It's the oil, Jennifer. It was always the oil. Seventy years of the same con and you fell for it because he said it in a red hat. But you didn't pay attention in history class, did you Jennifer. You were too busy passing notes. And now 181 kids are dead because people like you vote with their feelings instead of their brains.

Jennifer, I filled up my car yesterday. $78. Last month it was $66. You drive a Tahoe, Jennifer. You're paying more than me. And oil is heading for $100 because your president shut down the strait where 20% of the world's oil flows. He blew up the oil supply to steal the oil. Let that rattle around in your head for a minute. Take your time. I know critical thinking isn't something you picked up between the MLM calls and the mommy wine memes.

Jennifer, Congress voted this week on whether to actually authorise this war. You know, the thing the Constitution requires. That document you posted about on the Fourth of July between the firework selfies and the flag bikini. 47-53 in the Senate. 212-219 in the House. Your senators, our senators, voted to let a reality TV president wage an illegal war with no exit strategy, no endgame, and 181 dead children. Rand Paul was the only Republican with the guts to vote no. Rand Paul, Jennifer. When Rand Paul is your moral compass, your party isn't lost, it's in the ground and someone's reading it its last rites.

Jennifer, Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host your guy put in charge of the actual Pentagon, said they've "only just begun to fight." He's quoting the Carpenters, Jennifer. Karen Carpenter. While children are being pulled from rubble. The man running the largest military operation since Iraq got his job because he was good on a couch with a coffee mug and now he's quoting soft rock while 181 kids are dead. And you think this is what strength looks like. You think this is what a man looks like. Honey, your bar is so low it's a tripping hazard in hell.

Jennifer, they burned through 800 Patriot missiles in three days. Each one costs $4 million. They're shooting down drones that cost $20,000. That's 200 to 1 in Iran's favour. $3.2 billion in three days on missiles alone. My kids' school held a bake sale last month to buy new calculators. Jennifer was there. She brought store-bought brownies with a handwritten sign that said "homemade." That's Jennifer in a nutshell. Fake effort, real audacity. But sure, we can't afford teacher pay raises. We can't afford school lunches. We can't afford textbooks. But we can burn $3.2 billion in a long weekend shooting down things that cost less than Jennifer's Tahoe. The man who wrote The Art of the Deal is getting out-dealed by a drone that runs on a lawnmower engine.

Jennifer, "we want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran," your president said. He bombed a girls' school, Jennifer. On day one. 180 little girls. And Iran's foreign minister posted a photo of a dead mother holding her dead baby and your president responded with UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER in all caps and a hashtag. That's not harmony. That's not peace. That's a narcissist playing war with other people's children because he's never had to sacrifice anything in his entire life. Not one thing. Five draft deferments and a golden elevator and he's sending other mothers' sons to die in a desert so Exxon can pump crude. But you don't know about the draft deferments, do you Jennifer. You don't know about the bone spurs. You just know he "tells it like it is." He tells it like a con man, Jennifer. And you're the mark.

And Rubio told Arab foreign ministers this thing is going to last "several more weeks," Jennifer. Several more weeks of $90 oil. Of dead soldiers. Of bombed schools. Of your Tahoe costing $120 to fill. Of my family choosing between groceries and gas. Several more weeks and there is no plan to stop. There is no off-ramp. Your guy doesn't want one. He wants unconditional surrender from 90 million people and he wants to pick their next leader like he's casting the fucking Apprentice. But that's fine with you, isn't it Jennifer. Because you "don't really follow politics," you just "love Trump." That's not politics, Jennifer. That's a personality disorder. Yours and his.

That's what I want to say to Jennifer.

But I won't. Because her kid and my kid are in the same car three days a week and I cannot afford to drive those days myself. Not at $78 a tank. Not in this economy. Not in Jennifer's president's economy.

So I'll smile. I'll say "hot one today, isn't it." I'll load the kids into the car. I'll drive home past the gas station where the prices went up again overnight. I'll make dinner. I'll help with homework. I'll check my phone under the counter when the kids aren't looking and watch another video of another mother on the other side of the world screaming over another small body pulled from another pile of concrete.

And I'll hold my three a little tighter. And I'll think about the 181 who aren't being held tonight. And I'll wonder how the hell Jennifer sleeps. Probably fine. Probably like a baby. Probably in her "blessed" pyjamas with her essential oil diffuser and her Bible verse screensaver, dreaming sweet dreams while the world burns. That's the thing about Jennifer. She's not evil. She's just incurious. And in times like these, that's the same thing.

If I was still teaching history, I'd have to stand in front of a classroom this week and explain how checks and balances work. How Congress declares war. How the system protects us.

I don't have to do that anymore. But I still have to explain it to my own kids. And I don't know what to tell them. Because I used to believe it. I used to teach it like it was true.

181 children, Jennifer. Remember that number.

I know you won't. You'll be onto the next thing by Monday. New nails, new podcast, new outrage about something a drag queen did at a library. But those 181 kids will still be dead. And you helped. You didn't drop the bomb, Jennifer. But you voted for the man who did. Twice. And you'd do it again tomorrow. And that, more than anything, is what I can't forgive.

Your senators sure as hell won't remember either.

But I will. And so will those mothers.

Every single one of them. Except for Jennifer. She doesn't even know what goddam day it is.

~Texas Mom, Facebook page: I Fucking Love Australia

Synchronicity and soul work

 

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen or diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their souls." 

Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Alchemy.

It's been 12 years since I finished my doctorate, handed in my thesis and had an exhibition of my work at Curtin University gallery. After 7 years of intense study - which included a lot of self analysis and soul work - I was exhausted and didn't think there was any more to do in this particular field. 

Because I was focused on one particular area of archetype theory, there were huge gaps in my knowledge of Jung but there didn't seem to be any reason to persevere. I had done what I set out to do, gained some invaluable insights that changed my life and shut that particular book.

I was bereft for quite a while. I expected to be. But it was hard to endure. It was impossible to replace or reproduce the journey I had taken so I turned away from Jung. After going up several blind alleys, I eventually started using my graphic design skills pro bono for environmental activism. Back to the realm of humans with all their dysfunctions and miscommunications. I found the people politics very tiring but persevered.

I am very effective on Facebook - having beaten the algorithms, had several posts go viral and reached as far away as the eastern states. When Facebook disabled my account halfway through 2025, it was catastrophic. They reinstated it but then disabled it permanently. 

For 6 months I worked through someone else's account and posted anonymously but it was not very effective. I had lost my voice. I was angry and frustrated but after about 6 months started a new account. That worked for several months until Facebook cancelled me again. Instead of being furious, I took it as a sign because it was a clear example of Jung's synchronicity*. I support this theory because there have been many examples of it in my life. My return to Jung is one of them.

Joan Campbell was a Rosicrucian - a dear friend and mentor. When she died in 2015 at the age of 86 she left a short memoir for others to read. I don't know why but I never read it. About 2 weeks ago I started thinking about Joan and remembered that after 11 years I still hadn't read her memoir! So I read it. 

In her memoir Joan mentioned a psychotherapist she had worked with. I remembered her talking to me about that person so I thought I would reach out to them on Facebook. Soon after that my account was disabled. My partner had had a warning via Messenger that I may have been a scammer. I put 2 + 2 together and concluded that the therapist, who didn't know me, reported me as a scammer - which set events in motion.

I tried to get my account back but you may as well be talking to a brick wall when you are dealing with AI bots, so I gave up pretty quickly. That was it. No more. I was out. When I had worked through my feelings and frustrations I actually felt quite relieved. Facebook has become more and more toxic. It is populated by right-wing bots that infiltrate environmental and left-leaning groups. I predict it will collapse eventually because it is so full of propaganda, AI images and bots - you can't trust much that you see, read or hear on that platform now.

I had to laugh really. From beyond the grave Joan had indirectly hauled me out of Facebook. I took it as a sign that I should be doing something else, but what? 

Another bit of synchronicity got me to Substack where I found a link to a very useful website doing short courses in Jungian theory. When I started reading The Alchemist on Substack it was like I had never been away from Jung and his work is still the best guide for the soul work I have now resumed. 

*According to Jung, synchronicity is an 'acausal connecting principle, whereby internal, psychological events are linked to external world events by meaningful coincidences rather than causal chains'. 

How to Use the Mandala to Advance Our Psychological Realization

https://jungianalchemist.substack.com/p/carl-jung-and-the-transformative

Image: Original drawing of an archetypal dream by author.