Hemily is located in Taipei, Taiwan, and started her journey into NFTs during the pandemic. She has always made art, but never as a means of making money. She was working at an Art Museum pre-pandemic, and it gave her an appreciation for how the art world works. She heard about NFTs because of the huge Beeple sale, and it piqued her interest to dig a little deeper and learn what the heck was going on.
Once she learned more about crypto and NFTs, she set herself up on Twitter and saw that PFPS were all the rage. She wanted to create some that were unlike any that she had seen and started creating silhouettes to capture some of the popular themes that were going around at the time. She’s always liked mixing her colors, especially the moment before the colors start to blend. She started experimenting with this technique of “painting with butter”.
She feels very fortunate that her work has done so well, and that she has been able to support herself as a full-time artist. This led us to discuss whether or not this is sustainable. And like many NFT artists, she gets a lot of support from her community of fellow artists. She is considering a part-time job of some sort, so she won’t have to rely on sales solely to support herself.
She is inspired by nature and the amazing colors and shapes that exist in the natural landscape. She takes walks regularly and looks at the beauty that is in the world. She also is inspired by the artists in her community, where they share their ideas and support each other. The community has created a sense of belonging.
I asked about her process, and she said she paints the physical piece, then digitizes the painting, and edits it more thoroughly. She then destroys the paintings! She destroys them because they aren’t as good as digital work. This led to whether or not she would be interested in creating “phygital” work. Create the NFT and sell prints of that piece with it. This is something that we are working on at Expressions. Logistics are complicated, but there is something that happens when you have the physical piece of art in front of you.
Her favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh.
Her favorite colors are dark purple, almost black purple, and olive green. But the shade of olive green that she loves is what happens when she mixes yellow with black.
I asked what she would like to see a change in the NFT market, and her response was less speculation, and more interest in owners wanting to own the art for the long haul. The speculative nature of NFTs creates some toxicity and competition that seems to happen in the traditional art world. And this puts pressure on the artists to sell out their collections and takes away from the art.
She is working on a 1/1 series that will be dropping on Nifty Gateway before Christmas.
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