Hannah Dimmitt
Artist Anthony Sims
There’s something mesmerizing about artist Anthony Sims’ digital work, “Not Sure About Myself, I Am Certain” — a grotesquely colorful, skeleton-like creature moving its limbs amid a collage of random sketches that spin and float about the canvas.
It’s a painting, essentially, which the Fort Worth-based artist created by hand before handing it over to fellow artist Andri Wibowo, known professionally as TagaPaw. With TagaPaw’s help, Sims’ physical painting turned into an animated, multimedia piece that can only be experienced on a screen.
Then came the next step, perhaps the most challenging of all — selling it.
Making money off digital works like these is tricky for the artists who create them. Any image or video posted online can land in someone’s camera roll with a simple screenshot or screen recording. Of course, this method generally results in a loss of quality — plus, you don’t really own the work; technically, you stole it. Technically.
But there is a way to buy original digital art, similar to the way one would purchase an original painting or sculpture, set it in their home, and call it theirs.
Enter NFTs.