Nearly a decade ago, painter R. Tom Gilleon created a series of hybrid artworks that were oil paintings merged seamlessly with digital paintings. In one of his most famous works, Fort Mountain, Gilleon painted a landscape of Montana’s Square Butte as it transitioned through the seasons over the course of 32 unique paintings and 19 minutes. The looped video project was sold with a computer to run the video program and a high-definition TV to display it. It was also limited to 10 editions.
An image from R. Tom Gilleon’s NFT NFTipi-001.
Gilleon didn’t know it at the time, but he was an early adopter of the NFT, or non-fungible token, which has, in the last six months, merged fine art and digital cryptocurrency in fascinating ways. NFTs are unique digital information that can be bought and sold, granting the owner sole ownership over the digital token. NFTs have sold for seven and eight figures, and ranged from memes to fine art images. For Gilleon, who was selling unique digital art under the name PixOils as early as 2013, NFTs offer an opportunity he is immediately familiar with.
“Fort Mountain was a fun experiment and we saw a lot of great interest, but sales were more difficult at the time,” the Montana-based painter says. “Fortunately, people saw the beauty of it and we—myself and Marshall Monroe, who started making these things with me—looked at it as a success.”
An image from R. Tom Gilleon’s NFT NFTipi-001.
Now, as part of a series of new transformative work he calls MMXX, Gilleon is offering NFTs of a dozen digital paintings. The first one, NFTipi-001, is a 35-second looped animation showing images of a Native American as they shift into a quiet scene of a tipi. It was made by using both digital and physical paintings. The work will be available in five editions, along with an artist proof. After it sells, likely sometime in 2020, Gilleon will follow up with 11 others on a monthly schedule. NFTipi-001 will be sold via NFT auction, and winners of the piece will have exclusive access to the files required to play and view the artwork.
“When it is purchased, the bidder is recorded in the Blockchain ledger that records ownership,” says Richard King, a representative for Gilleon. “The owner on the ledger can keep the work as an investment or display it in their home or office, or on framed displays. They can keep it or even sell it again. It’s an artifact like art.”
Gilleon adds: “I’m always up for new things like this. I want something new every time I start a project. I keep thinking what would Charlie Russell do if he could see this technology. He would go crazy on this idea. But for anyone curious about these digital paintings, I’ll never get to the point where I won’t crave oil paint on my hands. That part will never go away.”
For information about Gilleon’s NFTs, visit www.tomgilleon.art. —
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