Fly with Us: Traditional Painting Supercharged

When I saw Alotta Money’s art for the first time around the end of 2019, I was, like just about everyone else, totally flabbergasted and amazed with the quality his work. It is so full of this unique combination of unparalleled imagination, an incredible sense of humor and absurdity with skill and talent. I was an instant fan!

In early 2020 we started communicating and thinking about a collaboration. At the time, we were both very busy with other projects, but although we had to postpone the idea a few times, we never really gave up on it.

Alotta Money actually surprised me a little while ago with his announcement, that he had begun preparing one of my paintings for one of his incredible animations. He had chosen my painting “Fly with Me”, a self portrait I did for the “Salon Comparaisons” in Paris, with the artist group “Libellule”. Its a traditional oil painting on board, 90x130cm (roughly 35,5x51inch)

Here some “work in progress” of the white on red underpaing:

and the almost finished painting in the studio:

The size of the painting offered Alotta Money a lot of detail to work with. In the original painting the face is painted on a removable piece, so one can stick ones face through the hole and become a part of the painting. This actually asked for Alotta Money to put his face there as well as he will mention later in the text!

I need some three months for a painting like that, but after all, it is now only the base for the collaboration piece and the beginning of a new journey. When I asked Alotta Money about his creative process, he wrote:

“Haha, my chaotic creative process once I barely have an idea where I’m going is mostly staring, playing with elements, taking a bath, smoking a joint until the light comes and I get all sort of physical clues, adrenaline rush, excitement, telling me this is the right idea.

Then I jump on the computer and can work 20 hours straight, always leaving room for a new idea and even sometimes totally changing direction after a while because something radically awesome just waved at me from the back of my skull…

I keep absorbing things around me all the time, visuals, ideas, I never really am where people think I am, I’m often lost in a detail, unexpected composition or a pattern, having to watch movies twice to really get to the plot.

I’m lucky enough to have my subconscious working for me most of the time and finding things that other people sometimes like and buy.

And that’s mostly why I struggle talking about my work because I only use the left side of my brain to use tools, the right side is doing all the work while I click here and there and touch my beard.”

Probably sounds familiar to a lot of the creatives out there. I definitely found some similarities to the way I… ahm… work.

I knew, Alotta Money was going to create something really amazing again but every update he sent was another jaw dropping surprise. Just seeing the list of layers he created from the painting made me wonder, if I really had painted all these details:

When I asked for some more background info Alotta Money wrote:

“I always loved Reinhard’s work, textures and details were so realistic that at first I thought he was making collages too. I realized later visiting his website that he was painting those wonders.

When we started talking about a collaboration, I saw Fly with Me and thought of all the possibilities that such details would give me. Had the changing face idea looking at the stroke surrounding the face on the painting, damned, it was the original idea, people could place their head through the hole and take a picture!

It took me some time to use my own face in this piece… my double eyed John Cleese avatar would have been convenient but as the original piece is Reinhard’s self portrait, I had to.

What would it be to fly with me? We would fly where crypto currencies are in the air, bitcoin stars all around the sky. Fly free from the bounds and restrictions of an economic slavery system. The hot wind from the burning banks would take us even higher, to the moon and beyond.

I turned the oranges in blue and desaturated pinks. The reflexion in my shades shows the world I spend half my life in, Cryptovoxels. The moving eyes are from my first metaverse building, also part of the Scarlet Factory on top of the chimneys. Everything you see here made my art grow and the buds of the plant are details from my first SuperRare and Async pieces.

I never did anything that personal, the animations are I think the most complex I ever did and working with such creative and beautiful material from Reinhard was an amazing trip.”

An amazing trip indeed, also for me. Getting to know Alotta Money a little bit better and getting a very close look at the way he creates, works and thinks. And to see my painting taken to the next level as “Fly with Us!”