Virtual Journal: The artists I heavily resonated with in 2025
I was asked recently in an interview which artists inspired me, and weirdly I don’t get that question often and I really had to think about how to answer that.
Not because I don’t have influences, but because I realized I don’t usually arrive at artists in a linear way. I don’t have any traditional art education. Most of the artists that end up meaning something to me feel like they appear along my creative journey.
Like I was already moving in a direction, already following a path, and then suddenly I’d stumble across someone else who had been walking that path decades longer than me.
So this is less of a list of my inspirations and more of a yearly remembrance. A journal entry. A way of acknowledging the artists that presented themselves on my journey or artists that my creations led me to.
Brian eno
Brian Eno has been everywhere in my life this year.
Not just musically, but philosophically.
What I love most about him is his do-everything attitude, the refusal to be stuck in one lane. Music, visual art, writing, technology , collaboration. It all feels like one continuous practice rather than separate disciplines.
I’ve listened to his collaborations with Robert Fripp (King Crimson) countless times. I read to them. I create to them. I reflect to them. That soft, ambient, suspended feeling has become a kind of mental workspace for me.
I love how collaborative his mind is, working with people like Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), and honestly, my dream collaboration would be Eno and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta). That collision of systems, texture, and chaos feels like it would open an entirely new room in my brain.
What really sealed it for me this year, though, was seeing a generative film he made, a film that is never the same twice. Infinite hours, algorithmically assembled, constantly shifting. It felt less like watching something and more like entering a new form of film from the future. Where it’s never the same twice.
I love that he embraces new technology without nostalgia or fear. He doesn’t feel like an old head guarding tradition. He feels curious. Open. Still playing.
That mindset alone has been hugely inspiring.
That’s the mindset I hope to carry with me through my creative practice and life.
Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool found me standing on a street corner in New York.
I was waiting for a friend when I noticed this massive abstract piece inside of a building. From a distance it looked like a painting that was somewhat in the same vein I was exploring with these circular movements. When I got closer, I realized it was a mosaic and that completely blew me away.
That hit on such a personal level. My grandmother used to make mosaics, and it was one of the first art forms I ever felt connected to without really knowing why.
What made the moment uncanny was how closely his work aligned with where my curiosity was naturally taking me. I’ve been working with annealed copper pipes, swirling gestures, movement, sculptural photographs of trash and then suddenly I’m standing in front of something that feels like it’s operating on the same frequency. It was almost spooky.
I dove into his work and found his photography book West Texas Psychosculptures. I’d been shooting what I call Accidental / Intentional photographs, making art out of my life and trying to find hidden sculptural beauty but without really labeling it or doing anything with them. Seeing him present almost trash-like forms into something so elevated was extremely inspiring.
It felt less like influence and more like a validation.
If anything, it made me pull back because at this point, I actually have to limit how much of his work I take in because the overlap is so strong. But I hope one day I can really dive deep into it again, once there’s enough distance.
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin came into my year through a beautiful coincidence, the kind that feels intentional only in hindsight.
She had a show in New York that I was desperate to see, but I was traveling and missed it. That was it, or so I thought. Then later, I was in Italy for a show I was in. I was wandering around Florence on the first day I was there.
And then I looked up.
Tracey Emin.
Sex and Solitude.
I couldn’t believe it. I went in immediately.
One of the things that stayed with me most was a recreation of her studio. Four walls. Paint everywhere. Canvases leaning, stacked, resting on the floor. A mattress. Notes. Marks. Evidence of living. Evidence of making.
It felt like I was just looking in through the window.
Her paintings are figurative, but they’re also not. The bodies dissolve into shape and color. And that’s where they really connected with me. I tend to resonate more with shapes than people, but somehow she translated the human figure into something that spoke my language.
The colors felt intimate. Raw, dripping, minimal. Nothing extra.
If I had just taken a train across New York, spent an hour with the show, and gone home, it wouldn’t have landed the same way. Being in Italy felt like the universe saying: not there — here.
It felt delayed on purpose.
Gang Culture
This one is less coincidence and more admiration from afar.
They do what I naturally resonated towards just a million times better and more prolific.
Gang Culture documents overlooked strange decay of Los Angeles, mostly on an iPhone, lo-fi, fast, intuitive. I love how quickly the work moves. There’s no overthinking. Just whatever catches their eye.
I like to operate on that same frequency. Just whatever color or shape jumps out at me and disrupts my brain at that moment. I photograph bent metal, scraped paint, odd shapes, little accidents in the world but mostly just shapes and colors. Not because they’re important, but because they catch my eye. Sometimes those photos become references. Sometimes they are part of collage. Sometimes they’re just funny. Recently though I started sharing them as pieces in themselves.
Snap.
iPhone or camera. Whatever I have on me, doesn’t matter.
What’s interesting is seeing that instinct mirrored in someone else’s work, especially in a different city. Los Angeles and New York feel totally different, but the urge to notice the strange beauty hiding in plain sight feels shared.
What they capture is truly mind blowing and I think it’s some of the most moving and powerful contemporary photography. It makes me keep going and inspired me to start sharing it despite how similar the work may seem. There’s something in the air capturing the strange world humans have built and the ruins it’s leaving behind. Gang Culture grabbed that out of the air and is doing it the best. Maybe they put that something in the air for me. That’s the power of art, It changes your perspective of the world.
Please go check out their work and follow if you are on Instagram.
@gangculture
Closing
I don’t really know who this is for.
And I think that’s kind of the point.
Part of me just wanted to get this down somewhere. To mark a moment in time. To look back one day and remember where I was, what I was thinking about, and which artists showed up along the way while I was making.
I like the idea of this becoming a record. Not of success or milestones, but of encounters. Artists I found. Artists that found me.
I also think influence doesn’t always mean imitation. Sometimes it’s confirmation. Sometimes it’s permission to keep going.
This isn’t a declaration of taste or a list of references. It’s a creative snapshot. A way of saying: this is where my head was, this is what was feeding the work.
If I do this again in a year, or in 2027, I’m sure the list will look different. And I love that idea.
This isn’t about likes or reach. It’s more like a virtual journal. A sketchbook that happens to live online. Something to keep me moving forward and hopefully connect with like-minded people along the way.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for listening.
I’ll catch you soon.
