It’s an unusually warm day inside my Santa Monica apartment and I’m sweating with the effort of what used to be a fairly easy thing for me to do; drawing a picture. This one is special, it’s a portrait of my partner that I intend to gift for his birthday. It’s based on a photo I took of him, all smiles and beaming with happiness in the golden hour sun. But it’s my third attempt of the day and my hand is pins and needles, seizing up in uncontrollable spasms. My grasp on my pencil falters for the last time as I come to the sobering realization that I can’t do this anymore. The muscle wasting and nerve damage in my hand has gotten undeniably worse and I simply don’t have the strength.
I mentally added drawing to the growing list of things I can no longer do while tossing my last attempt into the small pile of failed sketches on the couch next to me. I decided to just give him all of them in the hopes that the effort alone would be appreciated, or maybe he’d find them amusing. As I looked down at all my strange unfinished portraits I laughed it off to myself. But when I presented them to him later and had to explain what happened, it took all of my strength not to start crying.
This was the year I finally had the means, and the guts, to tackle the neurological condition that brought my budding career as a cellist to an end years ago and has, on occasion, even robbed me of the ability to walk. This year it also threatened to take away another cherished activity of mine; creating art...
I had decided at the start of the year that I wanted to challenge myself in a new medium and create a series of self portrait paintings. After spending most of the last 2 years gaining recognition as a video artist, this felt like an exciting thing for me to try. I started shopping around for studios to rent and researching different painting techniques. The first step for me was to create sketches that I would base my paintings off of. That was when I was really forced to reckon with how bad the weakness in my hand had gotten. I couldn’t complete one sketch without being riddled with painful cramps for days afterwards. They even happened while I was sleeping.
In the spring I went on a self-imposed desert retreat to disconnect and problem solve. How could I achieve my goal when I can no longer physically draw or paint? How could I turn this into an opportunity to challenge myself differently? The year prior I had begun working collaboratively with AI, notably on my “Frogeform” series. It had only been 6 months since “Frogeforms” was released but AI art tools seemed to have advanced lightyears, as had my skills working with them. And I had discovered a digital painting app called ProCreate which was surprisingly easy on my hand with my Apple Pencil.
I decided to experiment with giving the AI portraits I had taken of myself along with text prompts from my journal. I was caught off guard with emotion when one of my first attempts created an image of me as a queen. She looked so strong, so self-assured. I felt like I had fed the AI part of my soul and it was holding a mirror up for me to see who I really am for the very first time. After feeling weak in so many ways throughout this process, I now felt more determined and able than ever to complete my series.
After some experimenting, I finally settled into a workflow. I started with a photo of myself and a text input. The text input would contain meaningful phrases from my journal writings along with stylistic prompts like "iridescent, neon, painting”. I fed the image and text prompt into AI with many variations until I landed on an output I liked. Next, I’d bring the AI image into ProCreate where I would draw and paint over it. Then I would put the painting back into AI, take my favorite outputs and start the process over, often dozens of times. The final steps were with software to create some of the glitchy, pixel sorting effects and compositing. I did a final color pass in Lightroom.
I became completely immersed in this workflow. My routine was to go outside in the morning and work until the desert sun had crept up to where I sat, often with the chuckwalla lizard who lived in my chair. In the midday heat I’d switch gears, going inside to work on further post-processing and generating new AI outputs for the following morning. By the end of my stay in Joshua Tree, I had created over 30 of these self-portraits. I could hardly contain my excitement. But my series still needed a name... and it was some time before it finally came to me; Divine Recursions. I had experienced some profoundly moving, and even spiritually significant, moments working with AI on this series. When I explained my process to people, they tended to go wide-eyed at how many back and forth steps there were between my inputs and outputs. Most of my projects involve a lot of recursion and this was no exception.
When I got back from the desert, I started seeking treatment and a formal diagnosis for my neurological condition. I faced some of my biggest fears with the tests I was subjected to, things like being shocked repeatedly and having large needles stuck deep into my muscles (that one made me faint!) My summer was punctuated by hospital visits and being passed from one befuddled specialist to the next. They all agreed that something was measurably wrong, but none of them could determine what the cause was. I had a breakdown in the parking lot of the hospital after one of my last tests determined that the muscle atrophy was permanent, and likely to get worse, after initially being told that it could be fixed with surgery. And even more harrowing, MS was back on the table.
I struggled to let people into what I was going through and isolated myself while I processed the trauma. I suffered a major depressive episode. As a last resort I was given a comprehensive genetic screening for the first time. When the geneticist called with my results, they told me that I have a genetic variant on a gene (NEFL) associated with Charcot Marie Tooth diseases. My particular variant had never been seen before, (a fact the geneticist seemed a little too excited to share with me.)
This means that I have no prognosis, or technically, even a formal diagnosis until more people test with the same variant. No one can tell me how far my disease will progress, but I was happy to learn that this ultimately is not life threatening. After some of the scary things I was being screened for, I was actually relieved at the news that this is the (likely) explanation for it all.*
It took me longer to curate the final selection of Divine Recursions artworks than it took for me to create them. I just wasn’t in the right headspace, and as the summer wore on, I found myself wondering if any of these pieces were even any good to begin with. AI art exploded seemingly overnight while I was dealing with my health. A fun tool called Dall-E was going viral, making it easier than ever for anyone to explore AI art generation through text prompts. People seemed to love it, but it also contributed to some now common misconceptions about what it means to be an artist using AI and what that process entails. The average person still thinks that AI art is only as simple as typing something into Google. It seemed I had missed my window of opportunity to release Divine Recursions to an open-minded audience. But I pushed forward and quietly started circulating it professionally anyway.
I loved the first test print I did from Divine Recursions so much that I had it framed and hung it up in my house. It’s hanging right behind me as I’m writing this now, actually. Another piece from the series is currently gracing the walls of the esteemed Bitforms Gallery in San Francisco as part of the first AI art exhibition, Artificial Imagination. The exhibition at Bitforms has gotten a lot of attention and AI art is now a hotly, and even violently, debated topic. There has been more press coverage of this exhibition than any other I’ve participated in or curated. It opened in October and I’m still doing interviews for it every other week, it seems. The last two were with scholars at Harvard and Stanford. The majority of the headlines are different permutations of “AI Art: Is it really art?”
At the opening night of Artificial Imagination, the culture editor from a respected publication briefly and begrudgingly asked me a few questions after being prompted to by the show’s PR person. Later I saw their feature declaring “nothing about most of this art looked craft-driven or personal… These pieces may have looked like art, but they didn’t feel like art to me. It felt more like contract labor, merely a hired robotic hand…There was a cold gap between the creation and the creator…”
At first I was angry; how could they say that about the most deeply personal series I’ve ever created? I could hardly be surprised though, because despite being one of the only artists present for the opening, I wasn't really asked to share my story. It made me feel like I didn’t have a voice or that people just don’t care. It’s a feeling I don’t like, but I realize now that I needed to experience this. Despite the success of being in a major exhibition at Bitforms alongside artists like Refik Anadol, I was still struggling with confidence in my work. The negativity of the summer was still lingering with me. The clickbait headlines about my exhibition and toxic anti AI commentary taking over social media put me in a position where I felt I needed to defend my art for the first time in my life. And that was the moment I realized that I am on the cutting edge of something very important, that my story is important, my art is important. And that I don’t need anyone else to give me a voice.
AI has given me the ability to create in ways I thought I would never again access. It’s also given me the ability to iterate and workshop creative concepts more efficiently than ever before, at a fraction of the cost. Do I wish I could paint and draw in a dedicated studio? Of course I do. But I not only physically can’t, I also financially can’t at this time because I need to prioritize my medical expenses. I am able to train AI using my existing art and now even my own music. Among other amazing things, I can essentially collaborate with myself, pre-disability. It’s philosophically mind-bending and truly incredible.
Most importantly, working with AI has been exceptionally rewarding simply as an artist. It’s one of my favorite tools because it endlessly rewards my curiosity. I love the interplay of AI generated output and my analog hardware. I know I would be just as passionate about AI even if I was physically capable of creating any way that I pleased. And while it certainly isn’t without merit to debate the ethics of AI, I couldn't be more excited about the future of art with AI as a readily available and accessible tool for artists everywhere. Some artists already doing amazing things with AI are Claire Silver, Remi, Zak Krevitt, Holly Herndon, Blank Embrace, Tu.uk’z, Blake Wood, DEHISCENCE, and the artist who provided me with all I needed to first get started creating AI video art, Cibelle.
So what lies in the future for Divine Recursions? I am in love with them as physical artworks and would be tremendously happy to have a proper solo show with the series next year. I will need a lot of help to make it happen, but I am confident that the right opportunities will come my way.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to expand my practice and release new artwork on a regular basis as a full time artist. If any of the artwork here speaks to you or you feel called to support me, I have works for sale and I accept commissions. I also have a newsletter that you can subscribe to where I share my new artwork, updates and exhibitions.
Medically, there's a lot ahead for me still but for now I am just taking things day by day. And next month I'll be heading back to the desert to carve out the next chapter of my life in 2023 🌵
© 2026 Ellie Pritts
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