Bit-casso! the digital artist who made £2m in a DAY
...and, no, you can’t even hang his masterpieces on your living room wall
AT the age of 51, artist Trevor Jones is about to pay off his student loan and the mortgage for his modest three-bedroom flat in Edinburgh in one lump sum. And, for the first time since moving to Scotland from his native Canada 23 years ago, he’s purchased a car – a Tesla – because he can finally afford one.
But it is no lottery win which has led to his ‘rags to riches’ story just a few years after finding himself having to borrow money from friends to make his monthly mortgage payment.
Instead, Mr Jones, a painter who graduated in fine art and specialises in oils, has become something of an online superstar, his work totting up an estimated $3.3 million (£2.4 million) in just seven minutes last year, after taking the bold decision to digitise and animate his traditional paintings and enter, what for many remains, the bewildering world of ‘cryptoart’.
Just over 18 months ago, few people had heard his name but that changed when his artwork Bitcoin Bull – painted by him on canvas and then reproduced in a separate animated digital version – was sold in both forms for a total of $110,555 (£83,000) to separate bidders.
In the world of art, where provenance is everything, that a double sale of that kind could happen – and for such a figure – made
I don’t think I will ever get used to the way everything has turned out
headline news. Mr Jones is now recognised as being one of the most successful digital artists working in the UK after racking up further groundbreaking sales.
Speaking from his home in Leith, which he shares with his artist wife, Violet, he admits it is an extraordinary turnaround from a life struggling over two decades as a traditional painter to being one of the hottest properties in the digital art world, his work collected by wealthy investors and included in advertising for the Beijing Winter Olympics and the NFL Super Bowl in the US.
He said: ‘At my age I feel like a dinosaur already in this art space but what has happened is beyond my wildest dreams.
‘After years of struggling financially and rejection from a traditional art world I hoped would eventually recognise what I did, I don’t think I will ever get used to the way everything has turned out.
‘I’m in two minds about my success. Part of me thinks I knew this was going to happen, that I just had to wait and keep working. But now I’m here, I have imposter syndrome.
‘I often feel like I’m not a good enough artist, that others are still more talented and technically proficient than me, yet now I’m doing way better than them. I don’t think that will ever go away, it’s my personality.’
For many above a certain age who rely on children or grandchildren to sort out their computer or phone glitches, the world of cryptoart and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – a digital certificate of ownership, which can be anything from an animated piece of art to a video or song – is mindboggling, if they are even aware it exists at all.
But it has become a billion-dollar business over the past few years, with vastly inflated sums being forked out as an assorted band of celebrities, including socialite Paris Hilton, now trade in NFTs.
Three months ago, in a new record, American artist Pak secured $91.8 million (£68.9 million) after 28,000 buyers bought units of his artwork Mass Banner, gazumping a previous high by US-based digital artist Beeple, who sold a collage of thousands of photographs, titled Everydays – The First 5,000 Days, for $69.3 million (£51.9 million) last March.
With Mr Jones, the prices have been more ‘modest’ in comparison – his largest windfall to date was in
February last year when he sold 4,157 copies of his artwork The Bitcoin Angel – a painting of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa with a giant bitcoin in the background – at $777 (£582) each to become a multi-millionaire.
Recalling the shock, he said: ‘It freaked me out, the whole experience was completely surreal. I now have a financial adviser who worked on the board of Camelot for years and only represents high-net worth individuals. I keep thinking, “Why are you talking to me?”
‘I recently decided to buy my first car since moving to the UK. I
I recently decided to buy my first car. I couldn’t afford one before
couldn’t afford one before and I was going to get a Toyota Prius until I was persuaded to go for a Tesla. But even then I couldn’t face buying the top of the range, opting for the Model 3, which is half the price.
‘It also feels weird that I’m paying off my mortgage and student loan at the same time, something I never thought would happen.’
Mr Jones’s newfound success is a world away from the small, ‘rough’ logging town in western Canada where he grew up. He left in his late 20s after a friend was killed in a nightclub brawl, then backpacked across Europe and the UK, arriving in 1999 in Edinburgh, where he worked as a waiter, then manager, at the city’s Hard Rock Café.
After suffering a mental health crisis when his relationship with his girlfriend broke down, he decided to turn to art as a form of recovery and found himself on a foundation course at Leith School of Art, later graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with an MA in Fine Art, at the age of 38, in 2008.
It was through contact with other artists at the charity Art in Healthcare, where he became a director, that he began to see endless possibilities for marrying technology with art.
Mr Jones said: ‘I’d read a study that the average median time anyone looks at art is 17 seconds. I wanted to explore how I could extend that time. Around then, I started seeing QR codes appearing on products which people scanned with their phones. I thought I’d take that idea and apply it to my art.’
The transition from painting landscapes and animals to large multi-coloured QR codes sparked derision from some of his contemporaries until they saw him pull out his iPad at the 2013 Edinburgh
Art Fair and scan the code to reveal a number of moving images which brought his work to life.
His major breakthrough came three years later with a series of ten portraits of political figures, including Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Boris Johnson. Blending paint with litter picked up off the streets of Edinburgh, they sold to one collector for £4,000 each.
Mr Jones said: ‘I call it my “Hail Mary” exhibition because all the stars aligned.
‘The portraits were each accompanied by a video of the person talking a load of rubbish.
‘I also provided a six-feet-high sheet of paper for the public to write down their thoughts about the person. It was the most engagement I’d ever had with my work and completely transformed how I saw my art.’
Unfortunately, poor investment choices, mainly in cryptocurrency, meant his £40,000 windfall disappeared quickly but he used the experience to incorporate that world into his art.
He first learned about NFTs in April 2019 and, like many, he admits that to begin with he ‘could not get my head around it at all’. But after noticing a number of artists selling their work on a digital art marketplace for hundreds of dollars, he knew he had to try.
As galleries and museums closed across the world in Covid-19 lockdowns and digital art prices rocketed, he worked with an animator to turn his oil paintings into short videos which could then be made into NFTs.
The gamble paid off and, in July 2020, his Bitcoin Bull, an animated painting of a Picasso-inspired bull, decorated with bitcoin logos and Twitter birds, sold for $55,555.55 (£41,600), to prominent crypto collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile.
In a double bonanza, he also sold the original oil painting to the second highest bidder, for which he received a further $55,000.
He said: ‘For the most part, the NFT art community view these as two distinct works of art.
‘One is a physical painting, oil, textures, a frame and it can be touched, but it cannot move or ‘live’ in the digital realm.
‘The NFT is an animation produced from the physical artwork, digitised, deconstructed in Photoshop and reconstructed in various animator packages to create something entirely different, a dynamic animation with music and sound effects.’ He added: ‘They each tell different stories and each have their own provenance.
‘It’s a contentious topic and definitely up for debate, but the reason why the NFT sold for more, I believe, is because most of the big collectors in this space view the future of art as digital and therefore in their eyes, the digital holds more value than the physical.’
So, just who is buying digital art at those wild prices, and why?
Mr Jones said: ‘Artwork in general is purchased by people who want something to show who they are, like a status symbol.
‘NFTs are a new type of art. In this crypto space there are people with a huge amount of wealth who are looking for art that represents them. They could buy a Monet, a Picasso or a Caravaggio if they wanted to but they are not art historians.
‘These people tend to be techsavvy twenty or thirty-somethings who have made their fortunes in Silicon Valley and want to buy artwork they can connect with.’
But he added: ‘It’s not just about money. The artists and collectors honestly believe this is going to be a significant step in the development of the history of art and to be here in the beginning is very exciting.’
Whatever the future holds, a grateful Mr Jones, who enjoys a close working relationship with all of his collectors, is determined to enjoy it while it lasts.
To that end, he’s about to embark on a series of visits to crypto conferences in the US, though perhaps nothing demonstrates the power his artistry now wields more than a private party he is currently organising for a select 400 people who invested in Bitcoin Angel last year and turned his life around.
The event at Stirling Castle, in July, will see investors fly in from all over the world and for them, no doubt, it will be an opportunity to hear, in person, what Mr Jones is planning next.
He said: ‘I’m trying to always focus on the bigger picture and how I’m developing as an artist rather than thinking I need to make more money. I want to make sure each work I do is in some ways a step up from what I created before.’
But he added: ‘Let’s face it, if you are not always evolving, eventually you are going to go extinct.’
In this crypto space there are people with a huge amount of wealth