People have debated the definition of art for centuries. I don’t pretend to have the answer.
But I do know what art has always meant to me.
Art has always been one human soul reaching out to another.
Every work of art carries evidence of the person who made it. Years of practice. Failed attempts. Tiny improvements. Moments of frustration. Moments of triumph. The slightly crooked line. The brushstroke that wandered. The colour choice that wasn’t planned but somehow couldn’t have been better if it had been.
Those aren’t imperfections to be erased. They’re the fingerprints of humanity.
Art has never existed simply to decorate our homes. It is how we leave pieces of ourselves behind. Every painting, every carving, every quilt, every handmade mug is a quiet declaration that says, “I was here. This is what I loved. This is how I saw the world.” Long after the artist is gone, that conversation continues.
For years, one of my greatest pleasures was scrolling through social media or an artist’s website and discovering work made by real people. Every image represented someone’s imagination, someone’s hands, someone’s time. Every piece had a story.
Now I find myself scrolling less and feeling disappointed more.
AI-generated images have become almost impossible to escape. They flood our feeds, fill search results, and increasingly dominate places that once celebrated handmade creativity. Worse still, some people present these images as real, handmade artwork, claiming they painted or crafted something that was never touched by human hands at all.
But many of us do notice. We recognize the impossible perfection. The flawless lighting. The polished surfaces. The strange details that almost make sense until you look a little closer. They are images without a lived history. Beauty without a story. To me, they are all surface and no soul.
What saddens me most isn’t that AI exists. It’s that genuine art is becoming harder to find beneath it.
The quiet joy of discovering an artist you’ve never seen before is disappearing under an endless tide of images generated in seconds. Platforms that once inspired me now leave me disheartened. For now, I can still tell the difference. But many people can’t, and I worry about the day none of us will be able to.
When that certainty is gone, the internet will no longer feel like a gallery of human creativity. It will simply become a gallery of images. And I’ll stop wondering, “Who made this?” because I can no longer trust that anyone did.
Because I don’t love art for its perfection. I love it because another human being chose to create it.
I love seeing the brush marks. The pencil lines. The texture of thick paint. The carved wood that isn’t perfectly symmetrical. The stitched seams that reveal the maker’s hand. The tiny decisions that no algorithm could have lived through, because they were born from experience, patience, persistence, and joy.
Real art is perfectly imperfect, because people are perfectly imperfect.
Perhaps the day will come when we can no longer tell the difference between work made by human hands and work generated by a machine. If it does, I think we’ll have lost more than authenticity. We’ll have lost the quiet joy of wondering, “Who made this?”, and then discovering the answer.
That curiosity has inspired artists for centuries. It has encouraged children to pick up pencils, adults to learn new crafts, and makers to keep creating even when they doubted themselves. I hope we never lose it.
I don’t want a world filled with impossible perfection. I want a world where human creativity still matters—where the shaky line, the uneven stitch, the unexpected colour, and the visible brushstroke aren’t mistakes to be corrected, but proof that someone was here.
So, to my fellow artists and makers: please don’t hide your imperfections. Don’t apologise for the brushstroke that wandered, the stitch that isn’t perfectly straight, or the tiny details only you notice. Those aren’t flaws. They’re the fingerprints of your journey. In a world increasingly filled with impossible perfection, they are how I still find you. They are how I know a real person was here.
Please keep leaving those fingerprints behind.
Some of us are still looking for them.
–MJ
About Miranda
I’m Miranda Jordan, an artist, maker, educator, and event producer based in Nova Scotia. Artistrative is where I share what I’ve learned over four decades of creating and selling handmade work.
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If you’d like to explore the artwork that inspired this journey, visit mirandajordan.ca or follow my art journey on Facebook | Instagram