Featured in Midjourney Magazine

I’m grateful to have been featured in Midjourney Magazine Issue 17, where I had the chance to share a glimpse into my creative process, inspirations, and vision as an artist. The article highlights some of my thoughts, but there’s so much more I had the opportunity to reflect on during the interview.

Midjourney Magazine Issue 17

While the magazine published a curated selection of my responses, I am sharing the full set of questions and answers here. These responses dive deeper into my artistic journey and the themes that inspire my work. By sharing this complete version, I hope to provide a fuller picture of my creative philosophy and practice.

I’m grateful to Midjourney Magazine for the platform they’ve given me to showcase my work, and I hope these reflections resonate with you as much as the process of creating them did for me.

The full interview:

Describe the prompt for one of the images you uploaded. What was the process of tweaking and developing it to get to the final piece?

My process with Midjourney involves blending images and using collage sources. For these three images, I generated models using photography of myself, the people, and the places that help tell my stories. For “Raw Materials,” I combined photographs of myself and family members with archival images of our relatives and the places that shape our collective experiences. I then refined these outputs by prompting with text "oil paint texture" to achieve the final result.

Who is an artist (historical or contemporary) who has influenced your style and why?

Frida Kahlo has always been one of my inspirations. She and Salvador Dalí sparked my artistic journey at a young age and ignited my love for creating surrealist works. Recently, prolific contemporary glitch artists in the cryptoart realm have motivated me to push my work in ways I could have never imagined. Through surrealism, abstraction, and glitch aesthetics, I am able to communicate our current reality while also creating new worlds. I love surrealism because it enables me to combine and convey multiple ideas simultaneously.

How do you use those inspirations and create a style that is your own?

AI tools have significantly evolved my creative concepts, enabling me to access and convey all the information I want without limitations. I particularly enjoy creating surreal portraits and landscapes of people and places that hold elements of myself and my family members. By blending images of myself with others, I can uniquely tell our collective stories. 

What’s your day-to-day schedule like? How does creativity fit into your life?

With digital art, I can seamlessly integrate my creative practice into my busy lifestyle. I can quickly switch from work tasks to digital tools, allowing me to explore inspiration as soon as it strikes. This flexibility has enabled the rapid growth and evolution of my work and concepts.

What’s your dream creative job and why?

My dream is to be a full-time artist with a spacious studio where I can host workshops and collaborative projects, supporting other artists and educational initiatives. Becoming a full-time artist has always been my goal because there's no feeling like being supported and recognized for your work. 

I want to support other artists because I know that when communities invest in artists, everyone benefits. There is plenty of evidence that investment in artists and arts education is an investment in public health and well-being. As an artist, I have firsthand experience with art as a healing and liberating force. Art has not only helped me heal, but I have also witnessed it save lives, especially among young people struggling to find their place and purpose in an unjust and violent world. It is important to me that artistic tools, space, and time are available to everyone, especially those with historically limited access.

What’s your go-to technique for creating an interesting piece? Any secrets you can share?

I like to start by sourcing my photographs or adding paint to a digital or physical canvas. From there, I compose a landscape, abstract image, or collage. Sometimes I take digital photographs of my physical paintings and blend those images with photographs and digital compositions using Midjourney.

What advice would you give to your younger creative self?

Trust your heart and intuition—they will guide you exactly where you need to be. Never let anyone limit your imagination or your vision of what's possible—there are no boundaries to what you can achieve. Stay dedicated to your artistic practice; it will open doors to the right people and opportunities. The future will bring tools that can bring any dream to life, so dream big and believe in yourself.