Artist Elina Pasok explains why we should feel optimistic about the future of AI

Originally from Estonia, Elina Pasok is a mixed-media artist now based in London. Primarily a painter, she shares her work under the banner ‘Optimist Collective’, which functions as a channel and online shop for her work – while also defining her hopeful approach to art and the world. Here she tells us about her creative journey, and why exactly.ai gives her reasons to be cheerful about the future of AI.

I moved to London from Estonia in 2012, to do my master's degree in photography at London College of Fashion, University of Arts London. I did my BA in audio-visual media – so a lot of film, television, and making movies. I was heavily focused on photography to begin with, because I used to be a press photographer, shooting current affairs, and I started shooting music videos as well. But then a serendipitous event happened...

I won a competition run by the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. My award was for best fine art photography, and the prize was a gift card for an art shop. I made the decision to spend the prize wisely. I hadn’t painted in a decade, since being at art school in Estonia. So I got myself an easel, some canvases, and I started painting again. This was about seven years ago. It sparked a wave of inspiration. I started painting and trying new, mixed-media techniques, and eventually I developed my own style.

I mostly use acrylics on canvas. It's multi-layered and very tactile – there’s quite a lot of texture. I scratch my paintings and layer new paint over; layer again, scratch again. I also use copper foil details. When you see them in my studio, they’re slightly glossy and iridescent. I sometimes use the colour shift pigments you see on those sparkly cars that appear either green or purple as they pass you by.

I also make small clay bird votives. Ancient cultures often made votives, figurines representing something they needed, to ask for favours from the gods. For example, if you broke a leg, a votive of a leg could be offered to appeal for divine healing. A bird votive may have brought hope, music and freedom to the owner’s home. I find the British Museum a great inspiration for these, especially ancient Greek, Roman and surprisingly positive Etruscan art.

I paint a lot around the themes of ecology and health. A big inspiration behind this is my grandma, who was a diagnostic cytologist; she looked at cellular specimens on glass slides to diagnose cancer. She would take photos of some of the specimens for educational purposes, and she left me a box of photo slides with images of cellular structures shot on a powerful microscope. I think they may be my next project with exactly.ai. I'm going to scan them and see how I can merge a few ideas together. Cells are something of a motif in my art. Also coral structures, trees, blood vessels… There are so many things that interlink the macro world and the micro world.

My creative outlet, and Instagram channel, is called Optimist Collective. The idea of optimistic art is something I’m really excited by – and Optimist Collective has become an umbrella term for the many things I, and my partner Dan (a musician), do. We have an online shop where you can buy merch: prints of my artwork and prints of his album covers, for example. We’re very collaborative. I shoot music videos for his band Plastic Barricades, and create artwork for new releases. And Optimist Collective holds all of that together.

I’m trying to share a worldview about optimism in my art. There are so many things to be sad about right now, from the world burning, to wars. It's very easy to become depressed, and I find it's very hard to be optimistic. So I'm trying to inspire people to work hard to stay here, be present, and see the light.

I've been following the development of generative AI for a long while – waiting for it to get better, and it feels like now is the time. I'm very optimistic about it! AI is integrated into my workflow in different ways. Images can be used for sketching initial ideas and conceptualisation, if I decide to paint, or they may become standalone prints if they're generated in such a beautiful way that I can't resist and they become art on its own terms.

For me, it’s also a great tool for collaboration. Dan often says that he's not a visual person, and it's sometimes quite hard to explain my ideas to him – and him to me – because we have different visual vocabularies. With AI tools we can visualise things and send each other concepts that are too hard to explain in words. An image is better than 100 words, right?

Using exactly.ai, I trained a couple of models on my art. I'm particularly happy with how the trees came out – it translated my style really well. I trained another model on a few different bird votives that I’ve made, and it gave me some beautiful options. I asked it to make a bird with antlers, which it did perfectly. I'm definitely going to play with this a bit more, and try to generate a few ideas that I can turn into real sculptures.

I think my main goal now is to train the models to replicate my style the best they can. One thing I would like to try is generating prints, to diversify my real, tangible work. I have a shop set up already and I can sell prints. If I could create work, made by me, using AI as a tool like Photoshop – maybe reworked a little bit, then sent off to print and be hung on the wall by the client – that'd be ideal.

AI could become an artist’s assistant. What I love about painting is the actual process of it. I sometimes meditate; sometimes I work through deeper thoughts and emotions while I'm painstakingly dotting each little tree on a painting. But at the same time, there are other works that have a central idea I love, but I’d rather make into a digital print. Remembering artists like Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons – they had teams who worked for them. Printmaking in Andy Warhol's studio was a process. He would create the initial idea, and then he had collaborators who would print and finish the work for him. That could be AI for many artists. You still have your initial idea, your personal touch, and there's never going to be art without the artist. I think it's a great tool. I'm excited to play with it a bit more. I'm hopeful.