Tyler Hobbs

Tyler Hobbs

Tyler Hobbs is a generative visual artist who lives and works in Austin, Texas. He studied traditional oil and figurative painting and earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. He combines his skills as a fine artist with his skills in coding to create works of  Generative Art.

Hobbs works with pen and ink in a small sketchbook. The small sketches are often the inspiration for his generative art works. He looks at the sketch and then uses an algorithm that he hopes will produce the visual effect that he has imagined.

What adds to the artistry of Hobbs’ work is the random factor that he builds into each. Each code generates a large number of varying images. Hobbs goes through each  generated image, sometimes as many as  100 to 200, and selects the image that he will use to complete a single, complete and unique work.

When he is satisfied with a single image, Hobbs works with a local printer in Austin to create an archival pigment print. He includes a signed printout of the source code and a signed certificate with many of his works.

Hobbs also uses a robotic Plotter to recreate his drawings. Although the Plotter is programmed, it produces unexpected variations that makes each work unique. To see how it works, Hobbs has made a video of his F(l)light Plotter Drawings based on his sketches of birds in flight.

Much of Hobbs’ work focuses on context; on how the aesthetics produced by the computer relate to the natural world around us.

His work has been among the most sought after in the NFT art world. They have been exhibited in shows in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Switzerland and Dubai, and have been auctioned at Christie’s in 2021 and Sotheby’s in 2022.

Tyler Hobbs is interested in not just creating his works, but in sharing the context and meaning of the work with his audience. A deeper understanding of what makes Hobbs’ process so special and the work so unique, can be found in this post by Stephen Santoro: Deep Dive: Tyler Hobbs and His Artistic Process.