James Hurley

James is BOLD and direct, this is reflected in his art. He doesn’t let other peoples actions or approaches to life corrupt his mind or attitude. He is his TRUE SELF and has learned to follow his own path brushing himself off and carrying on when he stumbles or has taken a wrong turn, he learns from mistakes or failures. James has turned his negative thoughts about his dreams and ambitions, “its impossible”, into his reality “I’m Possible” this was achieved when he realised he is his most underused and undervalued asset. When asked to describe his work James responded as follows:

“I am an Artist. I am a creator. I am a creative entrepreneur. I turn Love, Joy, Passion, challenging emotions into art that makes connections between fantasy and reality to make photo-art that feeds the creative mind and generates happiness at a subconscious level.

I LOVE who I am and I POUR this love, my compassion and raw emotions into my photography and Photo-art as a way of sharing my LOVE with you. My sole aim is to leave a lasting impression on people that I meet, that interact with me online or choose to invest in my work, either my artwork or the magazine.

In short, if you want artwork that resonates with an emotion you have experienced or that fuels your thoughts then look no further, but remember, emotions should be observed and recognised for what they are they should be learnt from and not drive your choice and decision making.”

This month James has submitted one piece of photo art which reflects his current mindset with the increasing trend he sees around him of selfishness, lack of foresight and peoples lack of understanding that negative actions attract more negatives into your life. The message is “Its time to open your mind to what you are doing and how you are affecting the people around you before its too late.”

https://www.mycreativeimages.com/

A digital artist, Beeper, sold an NFT (digital artwork) for a staggering $69million at Christie’s auction. What’s surprising is that the buyer will not get a painting, print, or even a sculpture. Instead, the winner will receive what is now a popular digital asset called an NFT.

Unsurprisingly, since that famous auction, different industries have begun to tap into NFT’s potential numerous possibilities, including the art industry. This means, artists can reap multiple benefits from NFTs, and in this post, you will learn the basics of what NFTs are and how you as an artist can benefit from them.

In simple terms, NFT means non-fungible tokens.

Economics defines fungible assets as elements with units and which are readily interchangeable-like regular currency. For instance, it is possible to swap £20 notes for two £10 notes without changing the total value with money. But if an item is non-fungible, the above is impossible.

An NFT is a unique digital asset that you can buy and sell and it does not have a tangible form.

Digital art can be challenging to sell and even more difficult for buyers to own as it lives on an electronic device and the only way to view it is on screen or by printing a copy of it. However, NFTs offer alternatives that can benefit artists:

1. NFTs Offer a Convenient Way to Share Art

Artists joining the NFT world have realised that NFTs open you to a new format and space to create and even share their art and gives fans another way to support their work and career. This applies to artwork in the form of GIFs (like the Rainbow cat that sold for a whopping $690,000) to other more complex and remarkable pieces which include 3d renders with complex animations.

The development of a range NFT platforms and sites that support the use of NFTs means artists can now share their creations on a surprising number of new ways without the need to pay developers to integrate complex coding solutions for them to have an online gallery or virtual exhibition.

These included the purpose built gallery rooms available on Spatial.io, some examples of these can be seen here in the images in this article. This option allows artisits to use a virtual room to host a meet and greet or an immersive session where they can introduce their work or show a work in progress, o reven host a live auction in a similar way to Facebook or Instagram Live.

In addition there are also new platforms such as decentraland.org which is similar to secondlife, but has specific areas that host NFT art gallerys and exhibitions. Needless to say it looks like the Digial Art Gallery and Exhibition scene will be going through a series of rapid changes over the next year or two as the world of NFT art expands, which is an obviuos benefit for all artisits.

2. A Source of Revenue

NFTs also seem an enticing revenue channel for multiple brands worldwide. Taco Bell is among such brands and sold their taco-themed images, GIFs, and 25 pieces sold out in half an hour! Each NFTs

featured a gift card worth $500 that the original owner could use hence their initial popularity. However, these images and GIFs are now available on the ancillary market, with one going for as much as $3,500. Astonishingly, they don’t even come with the gift card!

Artists can also do the same for their brands and clothing lines and could enjoy the same benefits, and potentially earn a significant income. In addition artists can earn royalties through resales of their work, if that option was locked in as part of the original sale. Start by picking a site where you can “mint” you art such as Opensea, into an NFT and learn about the various costs involved, such as “gas fees” and explore other platforms such as Lazy to help list and promote your work . Once you know the basics, you can make your NFT and potentially sell it.

Please feel free to visit my personal NFT collections either via my two gallerys or via Lazy.com or Opensea, the links are shwon below:

3. Help Authenticate Art

NFTs also promote transparency and enable you to locate your work and actually prove ownership digitally. Some artists have used NFTs to create certificates of authenticity which are then attached as a printed asset attached to the back of physical artwork and these have a barcode link which opens the NFT thus providing a digital proof of authenticity.

4. Allows Artists to Preserve Their Artwork Securely

Although prints and physical paintings tend to relinquish and fade with time, a digital art piece or asset tends to remain accurate and intact. Unlike many licensing agreements, using NFTs allows artists to store data and transactions in a unique blockchain system. This is helps combat ownership conflicts since the NFTs database holds transaction details dating back to the digital asset’s initial minting. This means it is possible to audit the information and determine the legitimate owner/artist.

If you’re a professional artist, content creator, or simply a member of the art industry, no significant promises, but NFTs could be worth checking out. Nonetheless, it is all on you to make the first step. Galleys: Spatilal: https://bit.ly/MYCI_Spatial Secondlife: https://bit.ly/MYCISLGallery

Marketplace Platforms: Lazy: https://lazy.com/mycreativeimages Opensea: https://opensea.io/JamesHurley