NFT Showroom Artist Spotlight: @astrohive

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself!

I am a 48 year old (yep 48) digital artist from Australia.

Q: What is your art background?

I don't have a formal background in art. The closest thing I ever got to formal training was when I was about thirteen, and my father had me go to an art tutor we knew, a Polish woman who'd just arrived in Australia.

I learnt a lot from her. I grew up around my father painting and sketching. He was openly unimpressed with his own work, but saw that I had some talent at drawing.

Q: How long have you been in cryptoart/ NFTs, how did you discover them and what has been your experience so far?

I began the whole cryptoart thing early 2021, when these weird things called "NFTs" began popping up everywhere. How could I not discover them? They were like Star Wars in 1979: they were everywhere! My very first NFT was minted on a platform called Pixeos Gallery, on the EOS blockchain. It's been an amazing learning experience since then. Often extremely frustrating, occasionally very rewarding, at least creatively. I'm not making a living off them just yet though!

Q: Any new art or upcoming projects you would like to tease?

I don't believe a piece of art has to have any intrinsic message or meaning. I have always had my head firmly buried in science fiction and fantasy, so have always loved just creating strange places and creatures, stuff that I think is cool. A work of art needs to just be something cool that 1: I like, and 2: hopefully someone else. I would like to continue my writing, which I've been able to do on Peakd. Writing tales of weird fantasy in a strange parallel universe based on biblical mythology has been one of my favourite ongoing artistic endeavours. I would love to have a VR gallery to call my very own!

Q: What are your top three favorite pieces of art you have tokenized on NFT Showroom?

Cells of Jeriko

Cells of Jeriko! I loved this piece! My process is very "scrapbook" I find bits of other pictures that haven't quite taken flight and cannibalise them for others. This one turned out great! My favourite part of my NFTs on HIVE is the captions. I like my picture to be a foray into a story, jumping in at a random point with a written caption. This one drew on my fondness for H.P. Lovecraft's work.

Brain Squid

Brain Squid! This piece is actually a reboot/rebadging of one of my very earliest works, harking back to a piece I created with Pixlr for my youtube channel! I just loved the texture! It was one of those pictures that just worked perfectly for me.

Divine Spark

Divine Spark! This was an early experiment with one of my very favourite and still heavily used apps; Mirrorlab. It knocked my socks off when I made it.