Calvert’s paintings incorporate diverse technologies, including fresco, 3D modeling and data manipulation. In their work, painting grapples with its digital counterpart — trying to disguise itself into digital imagery while at the same time differentiating itself as material, human and tangible.
Calvert’s most recent body of work employs a custom machine learning model developed in collaboration with the computer engineers at WashU’s McKelvey School of Engineering. The model uses a dataset of over 600 historical still-life paintings to generate new invented images. The practice connects art history to current visual culture, which is shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and blurred boundaries between real and virtual.