Katya Scheglova on process, painting and using AI as inspiration

In Katya Scheglova’s eyes, the work of creating a painting isn’t too different from the process of using artificial intelligence. Both track a journey from reality to abstraction. Katya’s distinct take on portraiture plays with ideas of representation. Her pictures – sensitive, surprising oil on canvas works that capture intimate, human moments – start with source material, only to pass it through the “neural network” of the artist’s mind to produce something altogether new.

Based in Moscow, Katya initially found success as a designer and art director for cinema and theatre productions, before establishing herself as a painter. Despite the decidedly physical quality of her paintings, her process is deceptively technological. Many of her paintings start with digital images – photos or videos – which Katya then modifies using Photoshop, before using these experiments as the basis for a new painting. It’s a process of transformation: taking the materials of real life and evolving them into a distinct, new piece of work. That’s why we were excited for Katya to try exactly.ai – a creative platform where precisely this kind of experimentation is facilitated by artist-led AI models.

Katya uploaded a number of her original artworks to create several AI models. Then, using these models, she generated a series of new images; some of which accompany this article, alongside the paintings Katya created based on them. Rather than seeing it as the final outcome, Katya has instead used exactly.ai as a springboard.

In a conversation with exactly.ai founder Tonia Samsonova, she discussed her journey as an artist so far – and how she believes AI and artists can work together in harmony.

Where did your creative journey begin?

I became an artist right after school, where it was very difficult for me to study. At 17, I didn’t go to college. I was left to my own devices and started drawing. No one drew at home, but I found a box of oil pastels and took a piece of wood from my dad that he had prepared to make a wall cabinet in the hallway. I painted copies of Matisse, Klimt, and the Pre-Raphaelites on this piece of wood. At some point it was discovered, and there was a terrible scandal, because I’d ruined the boards for the cabinet – my dad was very angry. But thanks to this, I realised that I like this type of expression. It made me feel good. At the age of 20, I decided to study to become an artist, because I lacked the technical skills. It was cheaper to study in St. Petersburg, so I went to preparatory courses at the Mukhinsky School, where I studied painting, drawing and composition.

In the preparatory courses there were only children, mainly from artistic families, who were still finishing 10th and 11th grade, and preparing to enter. They’d all been in art school from the age of seven. Compared to them, I felt like an overgrown adult, taking these classes for the first time in my life. The teachers, however, loved me very much and constantly supported me. I passed the painting and drawing exams, but still did not enter the Mukhinsky School. At this point I decided to give up my attempts to get an academic education. I was invited to work in cinema and returned to Moscow.

How did you start making money as an artist?

I never gave up drawing. I simply gave up the idea of ​​spending six years in a school. I realised I would go crazy there. I completely abandoned the idea that I would monetise drawing, because I began to work in film and theatre, and I knew that would feed me. And so I didn’t think about selling anything. But I was very lucky that the thing I love to draw is people – I always only drew people, and I was completely uninterested in anything else most of the time. And due to the fact that on social media there is the opportunity for you to give your work to the public, my drawings immediately began to receive a response. People started contacting me. At some point it became a project, like, “I’ll draw you for $100”. Of course, it still took, I don’t know, another ten years before it really turned into my work. By the time I was invited to my first group exhibition, I was 34, I already had a child. It had been more than 10 years of lonely work without any response from the art world.

How did you stay positive during that time?

I don’t know. I can’t give advice, in short. I was drawing and painting for myself. It didn’t seem to matter what it was for, why they should be made, and who it was for, except me. It was simply necessary for me, and gave some meaning to my existence. And it stayed that way for a very, very long time. Someday, maybe someone will buy it, and it will turn out that I’m making a lot of money; or maybe nobody ever buys it, and it's just there because it's there.

When we talk about artificial intelligence drawing something, it often gets a bad reaction from creative people. But you borrow as an artist, just like we borrow as creators of artificial intelligence. We look and repeat. Is there a difference in your eyes?

Look, I actually have a completely different perception of all this. That is, first of all, I don’t think that you’re a villain. That's not the point. There is a whole world culture, and as long as we live, our consciousness acts based on all of the knowledge we already have. We were born into this. If we were born in a cave, we would have developed differently. And the same applies to artistic consciousness, the whole intellect.

But what makes an artist different? That artificial intelligence is just another tool, it’s like a robotic arm with which I can perform complex neurosurgical operations with even more precision. The one who is the author of this process is the artist.

First of all, I don’t think that you’re a villain. That's not the point. There is a whole world culture, and as long as we live, our consciousness acts based on all of the knowledge we already have. We were born into this.

— Katya Scheglova, artist

Do you use artificial intelligence in your work?

I have always been interested. Precisely as an intermediate link. I’ll probably create two pictures from the images I generated [using exactly.ai]. My general method as an artist is such that I already work as a neural network. I shoot a lot of video, photos, or I memorise things or take screenshots of films, then I take all this material and generate pictures myself. I make sketches in Photoshop, using all this array of reality, as if translating it into an idea of ​​​​an image. And then it’s the same with my hand, when I physically do it.

It’s interesting to hear how you used AI generated images to create something new. Essentially, you are generating sketches for future work.

Well, because if I don’t draw at all, then what do I do? I was in America once, at an art gallery residency, and I was struck by how the art world is structured now – many successful artists don't work with their hands. Everything is drawn for them by assistants. This is common practice when you become a brand. I was in absolute shock when I first saw it, as if I had ended up in a clone factory or something like that. Why then become an artist at all?

As an artist, do you feel hopeful about the future?

Life, of course, is a monstrous thing, but being an artist is still, it seems to me, somehow fulfilling, despite all its hopelessness and vulnerability. Because you are an artist, all your life you work only for yourself. You are more vulnerable in this, but you also live your life more. Everything you do, you do because you decided so. This is your responsibility and your problem.

On July 12th, Katya Shcheglova unveiled her captivating solo exhibition, "The Off Season," at the Reloft Art Gallery

The exhibition invites you to become a casual witness and immerse yourself in a carefree vacation time, where the count of days is lost and events slowly replace each other. For the new series, the artist developed a neural network model in exactly.ai, training it on her works. Then, having written a request for the neural network (p r o m p t), Shcheglova generated sketches that formed the basis of the paintings. This is how the “image of the image” appeared, continuing the plots and revealing the artist's method from previous series.