What is art?

I’ve always thought I knew what art was.

It was the sculptor, hands covered in clay, slowly revealing a form that wasn’t there before. It was the painter, brush in hand, layering oils onto canvas until light and shadow felt alive. It was the photographer—someone like me—waiting for just the right moment to press the shutter and capture something real.

Even a tattoo artist, I’ve believed, turns skin into a living canvas.

That all made sense to me. Until recently. Because now I can sit at my computer, say a few carefully chosen words… and watch an image appear out of nothing.

No brush. No clay. No camera.

Just words.

I described an elderly man—long white hair, flowing beard, dressed in black, drinking from a tin cup.

It started as curiosity. What if words alone could create an image? Would that make me an artist?

That question wasn’t rhetorical.

Using AI—tools like Microsoft’s Copilot or Adobe’s latest visual engines—I began experimenting. I’d type (or speak) a description: nouns, adjectives, little details stacked on top of each other. The more specific I got, the more vivid the result.

And then—almost instantly—there it was. An illustration. A painting. Something that looked like it had taken hours… or days… or years of skill. But it came from a sentence.

One of my first attempts was simple: a reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood. I described the scene, the mood, the characters. The result? Surprisingly accurate—right down to the wolf and the splash of water around her feet.

Though I’ll admit… something about her face was a little off. Almost feline. As if the machine, in its effort to be creative, drifted just a step too far.

That was my first clue: This wasn’t just a tool. It was something else entirely.

Then I pushed further. I described an elderly man—long white hair, flowing beard, dressed in black, drinking from a tin cup. I layered in surrealism, added texture, mood, atmosphere. I kept going, refining the image in my mind as I refined the words.

What came back was astonishing. Not just close to what I imagined—it was what I imagined. And yet… I couldn’t recreate it. Even using the same words again, the result would shift. Subtly. Unpredictably.

That’s when I realized something important:

AI doesn’t just follow instructions. It interprets them.

AI loved the 1940's black and white photo of my father, but I wonder what it would look like as a watercolor painting. With AI, look no further than a simple command, a word prompt.

So I come back to the question: What is art?

If I can describe a scene—a woman walking through bluebonnets at sunset, longhorns grazing nearby, a red barn glowing in the distance—and a machine brings that vision to life… where does the art live? Is it in the image? Or is it in the imagination that shaped the words?

There’s no denying this changes things. Imagine a commercial illustrator in a Madison Avenue agency. A client walks in—not with rough sketches or vague ideas—but with fully realized images generated in her office. Perfect visual expressions of what she wants.

No more guessing. No more interpreting. Just: “Here. This is what I see.” Where does that leave the artist? It’s a question that should make anyone in the visual arts pause.

And yet… I can’t help but be fascinated.

I took an old photograph—my father, 1948—and asked AI to reinterpret it as a watercolor. The result was beautiful. Moving, even. But it also raised a question I can’t shake: Whose art is it? Mine, for taking the photograph? The machine’s, for transforming it? Or something in between?

“Just an AI created oil painting me and the Bambino… taking it back to New York Yankees Stadium, circa 1930. It started as a tourist snapshot at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory (see inset photo) with Babe Ruth… ended with me somehow pitching against him in a vintage Boston Red Sox uniform. Final score? Ruth gets the win… but I get the photo.”

And then there’s the deeper mystery.

Take that old man in black. Look closely at the texture of his skin, the shape of his ears, the detail in his hat. It feels real. Specific. Almost like a portrait of someone who exists, or once did.

So where did he come from? Is he a single imagined figure? Or a mosaic—assembled from fragments of countless unseen faces? A nose from one person. Eyes from another. A lifetime of images, blended into something entirely new.

I don’t pretend to understand how it all works. But I do know this: For the first time in history, we can create images from nothing but language. From thought. From imagination translated into words. And that changes the conversation.

So I’ll ask again: What is art?

Is it the hand that shapes the clay? The brush that touches the canvas? The camera that captures a fleeting moment? Or could it be something even more fundamental— The ability to see something in your mind…and bring it into the world?

I don’t have the answer. But I know this question isn’t going away.