Thought For The Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Who is the Artist on this? Please don’t say AI
Not a clue. I have rarely seen a more charming image of the Maddona and Child.
Looks to be AI generated. There is wobbliness of the halo for the infant Jesus, and the faces are utilizing a different style than the rest of the image, especially as compared to the hands. I suppose a human *might* do the latter for some effect, but the wobbliness of the halo would be an odd choice to intentionally make.
“This is a classical, vintage-inspired digital painting of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child.”
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1837493810/virgin-mary-with-baby-jesus-christian
“Digital painting” doesn’t necessarily mean AI. And AI just means the image was derived from the inspiration of thousands of souls (albeit sometimes poorly). If God can reveal a hint of His glory in a mountain or the refraction of light off a raindrop, I won’t devalue the grace a person might receive from viewing a beautiful digital painting.
Digital Art still requires the artists skill to manipulate the software tools along with the artist “eye” to create a cohesive image. And God can inspire religious art created by a human through a digital platform.
However, AI “religious art” is devoid of human creativity and I would be wary of Holy Images produced from AI software. You don’t know “what” is producing the image and why…seems kinda creep and empty.
To me it is essential that a sacred image have been from the beginning connected to a human soul. Metaphorically, I see humanity as a stained glass window that the light of God shines through, with every person a part of the window in which God’s light passes through in a particular way. So the light of God’s creativity shines through His artists, and they are called to shine forth onto the floor (of this life) part of the beautiful vision of Him that they have understood/seen/felt in that way that only they can, as they were particularly created to. I believe that this sense I have is related to how easy it is for me to immediately identify the lack of a soul that an image has passed through if it has been computer generated. I can feel the lack of humanness in the image that has been spit out by a machine, and could never call “art” something that has been the result of machine programming.
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