EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN
“Ever since a kid, I found myself having really intense dreams. I used to be terrified of them – and recently, I decided to start writing them down in a dream journal and recreating what I could remember on a digital canvas.”
A significant aspect of Pho’s artwork centers around exploring the unknown and delving into consciousness, specifically looking into what it could be and what it is. His vivid dreams started at a young age when he first experienced sleep paralysis, a terrifying experience that left him shaken every time. His sleep paralysis returned in his late teens, but he felt it did so for a reason: he could capture it and express it.
He started drawing only in 2019, creating album covers for music he made. However, he fell in love with the process of drawing, a creative expression that impacted his life in more ways than his music. After he started posting his art to Twitter more consistently, he realized that he was growing an audience around his art, not his music. That audience snowballed. “I find my art was more therapeutic for me than my music, and I felt myself gravitating more and more to it than anything else.”
This 21-year-old is an early tech adopter. His love of art was fixed by tech. “My love of tech saw me drift towards the NFT space. I was drawn in by the community aspect and the artist community – and then I found out what blockchain could really do in immortalizing artwork and immediately fell in love with it.”
Pho believes NFTs have created and empowered the next generation of artists and a new art renaissance. “If you make and combine something as powerful as tech and art, it creates limitless opportunities. Technology will not disappear, and art has been part of human history forever. Tech and art combined are extremely powerful. The artists in this space are making art and history right now.”
He evolves his artistic output to push his creative thought and self-awareness. Pho experiments with melding texture and human handiwork in his art, from digital canvases to printed artworks. His satisfaction comes from working on a piece for many hours, refining his feelings and putting those onto canvas. The NFT space expands his imagination and creativity.
“I want my art to be like a good song that you can come back to, stare at and still feel the same emotion you did when you first experienced it.”