Carl Jacobson

How do you find inspiration? How do you return to the creative process? For the visual artist Carl Jacobson, the answer lay in channeling his ideas through a completely new medium.

After a hiatus from the art world, Jacobson found himself drawn back in during the COVID-19 pandemic. By not being able to venture out, he began to venture in and used the gift of time provided by the quarantine to “sharpen the saw” and refine and develop new artistic techniques. Freshly inspired, Jacobson continues to experiment and push the boundaries of contemporary visual art. 

While exclusively working with original photography and digital tools, Jacobson draws influence from a wide range of artists and art forms, including Hokusai, Dalí and Kandinsky – this is apparent in the surreal energy and dynamic compositions of his own works. An early adopter of digital art forms, Jacobson has continued to operate at the forefront of the rapidly-evolving medium, exploring the possibilities of new media and tools to realize his singular artistic visions long into his career.

Flowers of the Metaverse is an artistic project from Carl Jacobson that stemmed from his desire to question our understanding of flowers, plants and floral art and how they would evolve in VR worlds with different laws of life, physics, and evolution. With this inspiration as his guide, he has created a new collection to allow him to accurately depict his ideas. Each work arises from a different hypothetical scenario – for example: “What if flowers grew in the ocean?” or “What if birds and flowers could interbreed?” Through a complex iterative process involving photography, sketchwork, mathematical models, digital manipulation and painting, Jacobson created a range of kaleidoscopic, floral artworks that are entirely unique in style and execution.