Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Hobbs.
Tyler, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I wanted to study art but ended up going the computer science route in college for practical reasons. After school, I worked as a software engineer for a tech startup. Meanwhile, I was continuing to make art, mostly traditional drawings and paintings. I decided to mix programming into art. It was a big part of my life and had shaped the framework through which I viewed the world: evaluating my surroundings as patterns, processes, sets of rules, and logic.
My experiments of creating artwork through programming thrilled me. It was obviously fresh in a way my drawings never were. Even just one month in, my work in the new medium was strong enough to convince me that I needed to pursue it to a deep level. Over the next few years, I made hundreds of works. I felt comfortable and fluid with the medium. Generative art opened an entirely new avenue of thought and creation for me.
Eventually, I decided to show and sell my work, and the business side of this endeavor began. That has its own challenges and complications, but I have been lucky enough to have great fans and supporters over the years, and I’m pleased with how everything is going.
Has it been a smooth road?
Creating artwork is a consistent challenge. It is not something you can solve and move on. Every time you step up to the blank canvas (or a blank screen), you have to push yourself to do something new, untested, and farther away from any work you’ve seen before. And yet it must be true to you. It needs to resonate with a deep chord inside you. All of these aspects of your work must continue to grow, and in many ways they require you to grow as a person alongside them. I can think of no more worthy and satisfying challenge than that.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
I am known for my approach to creating artwork: I write computer programs that generate art. I’m not talking about using Photoshop. I write the sort of raw code that builds up the program from scratch. The interesting thing that falls out of that is that it means my artwork is inherently about processes and patterns, the sort of thing programming is good for. Even so, it’s crucial for the work to reflect my feelings and desires as a human, and those are messy things. I think I’m known in particular for finding good mixtures of the computer and the human, the structured and the chaotic, in my work.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Dallas has a remarkably strong art scene. The museums and institutions are something that everyone should be proud of. You don’t necessarily need those things around you to make good artwork, but it can certainly help. Everyone needs inspiration, and everyone needs allies in their endeavors. The fact that the city has both of those in spades makes it a great spot for artists entering the scene.
Contact Info:
- Website: tylerxhobbs.com
- Email: tyler@tylerxhobbs.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/tylerxhobbs
- Twitter: twitter.com/tylerxhobbs
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