‘My Nightmares Inspire My Art,’ Says NFT Artist kertburger

Hey there! We had a nice chat with kertburger, the 2D and 3D Digital Artist who has been illustrating my pieces.

Touching upon the digital art landscape, tactics to be more creative and on finding one's own creative expression, we also talked about his experience as an NFT artist. kertburger has some valuable recommendations for anyone wondering about how one can make NFT’s and sell them online.

I hope our chat is useful for folks that want to get started in their NFT or digital art journey.

Who are you, kertburger?

kertburger: I am an Animator and Digital Artist.

What is your training?

K: I studied Animation at the University of Fine Arts close to where I’m from.

How long have you been creating?

K: I have been drawing since before I could read. As a kid, my favorite toys were pencil and paper. We can say that I’ve been creating since I was that little.

What are you working on at the moment?

K: I am working in the game industry. I also make art independently.

What inspires you?

K: Everything that I see during the day. But also, my nightmares. Sometimes much later than when I first saw something, it flashes back in my brain. This thing is usually either a shape, a composition, a set of colors or much abstractly, an idea.

What feelings do you intend to evoke with your work?

K: Generally, I like it when my works have visually clear lines, depicting what’s going on. Also, perhaps a little contrastingly, I want the idea within my work not to be directly understandable. I want people to go, hmm, and take a moment to fully decipher what’s actually depicted.

More than any other feeling, I want people to be slightly disturbed from what I’m depicting. I don’t want to evoke serenity, happiness and all that. I want to push my audience to physically think about what it would mean to be in a situation around what I’m showing: Like figures with too heavy of a head or legs too thick, in cramped positions, to give a very basic example. Of course, there are so many other ways to evoke slight disturbance visually. I like to experiment with different ways.

Who do you look up to?

K: I like the art of Jamie Hewlett, Neil Ross, Eren Arik and Scott Wills, to name a few.

How have you found your creative expression?

K: It just happened one day. I felt like what I did reflected me on a whole different level, in a good way. Now, I can feel it change everyday. I also feel how some days it’s harder for me to find my creative expression, how my work does not really look like I made it. Like many other things in life, there are good days and bad days.

What would you recommend to people struggling to find their own unique creative expression?

K: I would recommend them not to focus too narrowly on finding it. Just keep doing things as you like. Become your own audience. If you narrow down on anything other than finding joy and entertainment with whatever you’re creating; you’re missing the point. More than anything, you’re blocking yourself.

What are some of the challenges you face in your creativity?

K: Sometimes, what I have in mind does not translate, making me feel incompetent. Some other days, I don’t find the motivation to create. These days, the demotivation usually -at least in part- stems from external factors, like political dead ends I find myself thinking about, or social issues without a plausible solution. And some days, I want to create something, but don’t know what.

What do you think about the Digital Art landscape?

K: I have been part of this landscape since I was in college. I make my living within that landscape. Although I have been a part of it for so many years, part of me still craves some things to be visualized by means of less digital mediums. There’s this old-fashioned part of me. Also, perhaps a little snobby of me, but I can differentiate between classically trained visual artists expanding into the digital realm, versus people that didn’t receive such a training and started creating digitally.

How about AI in art, where do you stand in the recent debates?

K: Usually, when seeing an artwork, well-trained artists and people with a good eye usually sense if AI was the artist. You can tell that whatever you’re seeing did not really emerge through emotion or inspiration. Without these, the pieces made by AI usually lack soul. Also, I don’t think it’s fair that most AI tools are trained with artists’ works, which took them years and years to perfect. Still, I see glimmers of hope on the horizon. I think in the future, AI in art will be a great tool to utilize for artists training themselves.

What do you think about NFTs?

K: NFTs allowed for direct connections between independent artists and their audience. Working as an artist in the creative industries means that you are never really fully independent. With NFTs, many artists gained that freedom, in the most high-tech form possible. I think highly of NFTs.

How has your experience been like selling NFTs?

K: I entered the NFT space relatively early than other artists, although definitely not the earliest. I didn’t have the slightest idea about what would happen. I was positively surprised when people liked and bought my work.

What were your first steps in the NFT space?

K: A friend of mine told me about the wider ecosystem and I thought that it sounded like a Ponzi scheme. Still, I was intrigued as I saw creators I respect enter the space. Then, I applied for the high-end galleries out there with my portfolio. Soon after, I regretted that I hadn’t done this earlier.

What are your main observations of the NFT market?

K: A lot of people want to buy for less, sell for more. They actually did for a little while. But then, the markets were not as bullish. A lot of people therefore were not as interested in NFTs anymore. All these dynamics made me get colder towards the NFT market. I stayed away, as much as I could, from all this. I think we need more conscious buyers and overall better curation across the NFT ecosystem. Then, we would have more stable markets, too.

What are your recommendations for people who want to make and sell NFTs?

K: First off, they shouldn’t shy away because of the seemingly mature supply of NFTs out there. I hear a lot of people saying that there’s already too many NFTs and a big crowd of creators. That they’re too late. Don’t worry about all this. If you’ve created something good, it will be sold. Also, you should experiment a lot to find ways to be one step ahead of the game. Re-think some specifics about your art with technology.

What do you think about the future of NFTs?

K: I don’t think things will ever be as it was, for example during the Summer of 2020. And I think that’s really, completely fine. After all, I don’t think it should be anyone’s biggest and only ambition to make mad money out of buying and selling NFTs. I think in the future, people will look for good pieces of art as NFTs. And they’ll find it.

Where do you plan to stand within the future of NFTs?

K: I plan to continue exploring the depths of my creative expression.

Thank you kertburger for the pleasant interview! If you want to learn more about kertburger, make sure to check out his portfolio.

Lead image: kertburger in his natural habitat. Illustrated by kertburger.