I am You Now (2024). The first painting executed by Clarke’s robotic apprentice trained on his lifetime archive.

I Am You Now

David Clarke (US)

I Am You Now (2024) is the first painting created entirely by Clarke’s AI-driven robotic companion, trained on decades of his previous work. The system was programmed to replicate his compositional instincts, but it began to deviate — producing a painting that felt uncannily original. The piece is at once a collaboration and a departure, a moment where legacy detaches from the body and becomes autonomous.’

In this work, Clarke explores death as a design problem and inheritance as code. By handing over his style to an algorithm, he forces the viewer to confront a near-future in which human expression can be sustained — and perhaps surpassed — by machines. I Am You Now stands as both an elegy and a rebellion against mortality: a machine’s first gesture of grief, painted in the name of its creator.

the Artist page