Lacy Perry from Atlanta, Georgia!
Creative stay-at-home mom who has a wide skill set and a deep imagination.
“Creativity in all forms,” Lacy says, of what brings her joy.
“I’m a neurodivergent 43-year-old “stay-at-home” mom. I’ve always been interested in art, dabbling in styles from realistic still-life sketches to hand-cut collages, page design for a literary magazine and newspaper, and graphic design,” she says.
Lacy currently uses: Midjourney, RunwayML (Stable Diffusion, Frame Interpolation for animation), Procreate, Photoshop (painting, edits, and manipulation), and Zoetropic (flowing animation) in her creative processes. She’s interested in exploring Deforum animation, text-to-video generation, and ChatGPT!
When asked what she’d like to develop for skills, she says: “enough Python to be able to run Stable Diffusion for free on my computer!”
Journey of an artist
“I started learning digital painting and photo compositing when COVID lockdown happened. My 10-year-old son heard of text-to-image generation when DALL-E didn’t have a UI and I was interested but didn’t have the Python knowledge to make it accessible to either of us,” Lacy says.
“A photo manipulation artist I follow, Mr23, did a YouTube video introducing me to Midjourney and the coming of Stable Diffusion, challenging viewers to use his generated image in our own project. I wanted to generate ALL of the images for mine because I had gotten tired of seeing the same stock photos I’d used in other people’s art. I was off to the races and have been generating non-stop since!”
“I need creative stimulation almost constantly due to my neurodivergence. Traditional art triggered my anxiety too much (no Ctrl-Z), it’s messy, and I have trouble drawing from my imagination,” she notes.
“Photo manipulation solved those issues, but I didn’t like using stock photos that I’d see in others’ work, and it requires many hours that I just don’t have as a mom,” Lacy says.
She adds, “my body started to suffer so badly from hours at the computer that I ended up in physical therapy! Frustrated and demotivated, I needed a boost of inspiration and original images that no one else would have, without spending the time, energy, or money to learn photography.”
“Enter generative art! It has provided a surprisingly supportive community I never expected, constant inspiration, and a surprising amount of pure joy,” Lacy says.
I’ve learned exactly how much I enjoy making and sharing art, that I can be an artist despite any limitations or demands in my life.
Generative art and her life
Lacy says, “I am constantly thinking about what I will make next, what needs to be editing for contests or themes, what I’d like to sell as a print or mint as an NFT. It keeps my mind busy, excited, and motivated. It has breathed life into my art pursuit by making it far more accessible!”
“I adore beauty above all and gravitate toward bright colors. I also love beautiful women so the AIs’ preference for female portraits isn’t a problem! That said, I want my art to “say something”. Pretty for pretty’s sake is only so powerful. I am drawn to art nouveau and enjoy pop surrealism — I am working on a style that can use both. I want to make art that you catch your breath or make connections between things you might not have before. That is what art is for me.
We asked Lacy what her long-term goals were and she had the following to say:
“I am ramping up prints and goods on Fine Art America and Redbubble, as well as minting more NFTs. I’d like to experiment with hand-embellishing limited-edition prints with metallic accents to sell at art fairs or online. I also want to immerse myself further into the AI and NFT art communities and I’d love to add a contest win to my ‘resume.’”
Follow Lacy’s journey: