Artist Spotlight: Wallace Ayers
- Jason LeValley
- January 30, 2023
- 7:10 am
Artist Spotlight: Wallace Ayers
Wallace Ayers is a 23 year-old digital artist from Indiana.
How long have you been doing art?
Doing art for about 18 years but have been doing it professionally for about 2-3 years, 4-5 years if you count my photography career as well.
Wallace Ayers Art
How has your art evolved?
It certainly has become a lot more refined and denser in facial expressions. Of course, refinement comes with practice, but in terms of facial expressions–a majority of my older pieces were mostly textures vaguely resembling faces but not really. I could see the faces because I made the pieces, but others just saw random textures, fractals, and colors. I’ve been utilizing a lot more double exposures, dodging, burning, and overall better control over light in my newer pieces to help strike more facial features. I’ve also been using a lot more female references, but that’s mostly due to the fact that Instagram’s algorithm favors those pieces. It’s also partly because my audience’s demographics are mostly male, but we can pretend there’s an artistic reason behind it.
Wallace Ayers Art
What’s your ideal working environment?
Anywhere convenient. A large number of my pieces are done while I’m at my primary job. Most of them are on my phone or on my home computer which I secretly remote into while at work (but they don’t need to know that). I try to see what I can get away with on my phone before I have to resort to my computer for more advanced or custom techniques. I find myself spending hours on my phone trying to do a specific action when it would take my computer minutes to do it, but I avoid it out of convenience. The need for convenience is mostly fueled by my mental illness. It’s quite good at painting small obstacles as large walls and, if I can make the obstacle as small as possible, I might be able to leap over those tall illusionary walls.
Wallace Ayers Art
Has your work been influenced by other artists? If so, who?
I don’t have a lot of visual artists that I subscribe to for inspiration or influence. Most of the ones I follow are out of support for them and their styles. But I am vastly more inspired by musical artists. I listen to a lot of music in the experimental post-rock and noise-rock scenes. Musicians from Swans to Godspeed! You Black Emperor to Colin Stetson to even more contemporary artists like Pink Floyd. Their long, rhythmic, and layered songs drive home what I try to convey visually. I’ve even tried to make music and more animations to imitate their style more effectively.
Wallace Ayers Art
What’s your goal professionally?
To be honest, it would nice to make my living doing art. But realistically, I just want to get to a point where I can convey my relationship to the world, myself, and my thoughts accurately enough and be able to help others similar to my mindset who use my pieces to help mitigate their own relationships to the world, themselves, and their thoughts.
Wallace Ayers Art
Do you have any exhibits coming up?
No planned upcoming exhibits. I am still applying. But I have a small selection currently up in Art 321 of Casper, Wyoming.
