We live in a time when images are worthless.
Making image-based art at this moment is a fool’s errand, because most of humanity carries a state-of-the art production studio in their pockets: high resolution photography and video, along with re-touching, editing and SFX capabilities.
Artificial intelligence further complicates this seemingly insurmountable obstacle — even though AI is really just a distillation of humanity’s collective capabilities in terms of doing a decent version of all that’s been done before — but lacking any spark: essentially the Frankenstein version of everything seen before.
Painting — that is, making art with painting — has to be about everything the smartphone doesn’t and can’t do.