Artist raises $40,000 for Ukrainian refugees with painting co-created by robotic dog – The First News
Agnieszka Pilat said the robot dog’s tiny footprints represent “the feet of millions of refugees marching towards Poland”.
Agnieszka Pilat/Facebook
A Polish painter dubbed Silicon Valley’s “favorite artist” has raised $40,000 for Ukrainian refugees with a painting she co-created with a robotic dog.
Titled Sunrise March, Agnieszka Pilat’s painting was created using the “robot walking feet” to dab blue and yellow paint onto the canvas.
Intended as a lyrical metaphor, these tiny footprints, says Pilat, are representative of the large number of refugees heading to Poland.
Speaking to TFN, she said: “I watched the invasion of Russia in terror, although unfortunately it didn’t surprise me – or anyone familiar with Eastern European history. .
Titled Sunrise March, the painting was created using the robot’s “walking feet” to dab blue and yellow paint onto the canvas.
“Russia has been invading its neighbors for centuries, and Ukraine has been one of the most tragic victims of it all.
“Looking from afar, I was saddened and inspired by the developing events, and being Polish, it was not hard to see parallels between the heroic defenders of Ukraine waiting for the West to bring them its help (like a no-fly zone), and those Poles who desperately defended their country in 1939 while holding out hope that France and Britain would come to its aid.
Describing his sense of solidarity with Ukraine, Pilat said of Sunset March: “It is particularly painful to see pictures of old people walking. They’ve seen it all and I don’t see how they’re going to give up.
“I realized that many of my paintings in the last twelve months were in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.”
Posting on Facebook, Pilat said: “This painting, in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, represents not only despair but also a march for hope and freedom.”
But more than a simple artist “of the present”, Pilat has forged a name for himself as an artist of tomorrow.
Born in 1973 and raised during the height of the Cold War in Łódź, Pilat moved to the United States in 2004.
Struggling at first, she took low-paying jobs at a gym and then in a coffee shop before enrolling in art school to study illustration.
“At first I dreamed of working on a graphic novel, but by the time I graduated I knew I wanted to paint – what I didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t Just because you went to art school doesn’t mean galleries are going to bend over backwards to welcome you with open arms.
Pilat said she unconsciously realized most of her recent paintings were in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Her big breakthrough came when she met Paul Stein, a developer credited with building Airbnb’s headquarters. Commissioning her to paint a portrait of a machine – a fire alarm – word of the job returned to the Bay Area tech community and soon more commissions followed.
“Meeting Paul Stein was a real game-changer,” she says, “not only as a contact, but also because the commission made me change my style.”
From there, specializing in painting machines is something Pilat says he has always been comfortable with. “Growing up in Łódź, I was surrounded by old factories and such elements of industry, so in some ways it was a continuation.”
Although encoded in her artistic DNA, painting machines has not been without its challenges, she says.
More than a simple artist “of the present”, Pilat has forged a name for himself as an artist of tomorrow.
“In the past, I presented these old machines as if they were old heroic portraits. As someone who has always been quite introverted, I actually felt more comfortable painting machines and approached them as if I were painting a portrait.
This, she says, meant not just capturing their superficial details, but their inner spirit. “As a portrait painter, you always seek to capture the essence of the subject before anything else,” adds Pilat.
With orders piling up from high-flying Silicon Valley executives, it hasn’t been without difficulty. “I had to change my approach a bit because I found myself painting new machines, machines that didn’t have that historic past. It was difficult at first, but then I found a formula and I I started to see them as if they were teenagers who hadn’t yet found their role in the world.
Embraced by some of the biggest names in the tech world, Pilat has since painted for board members of SpaceX, Tesla and several other visionary companies shaping the future of the world. Commanding enormous fees, his art became considered essential among corporate collectors on the American West Coast.
Pilat’s big breakthrough came when she met Paul Stein, a developer credited with building Airbnb’s headquarters. Commissioning her to paint a portrait of a machine – a fire alarm – word of the job returned to the Bay Area tech community and soon more commissions followed.
“They are a different species of people in terms of their high tolerance for risk taking. Sure, I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable around these people, but overall I think they all like to think of themselves as a positive force for the world. They are people for whom the limits do not exist and who do not fear failure.
“For them, it’s about creating a legacy; they see themselves as a changing culture, so I think my art is relevant to them; I think that’s how I explain my popularity within this niche of people. It’s not so much about the visuals of my art, but about me being a machine evangelist – so are they, and I think they see me singing their song.
Even more exposure came when she partnered with Boston Dynamics to serve as artist-in-residence. It was there that she met Spot, a robotic dog developed by the firm.
“They gave me a brand new robot that I named Marcella; even though I used it to paint with me, I also found myself cherishing it,” she says. “Unfortunately when I returned after a break I found she had been sold – I had connected to her on a legitimately emotional level, so to hear that she would be engaged in hard labor in a mine of coal or on a construction site shook me up a bit.”
Growing up in Łódż, Pilat says painting machines is part of his DNA.
Other dogs followed, however, and Pilat can often be seen walking her robotic pet around town.
But although his art has gone viral, there is no shortage of detractors.
“There have been some very mean words, and there’s certainly a huge clash between the traditionalism of the old American east coast money and the new west coast way of looking at things. I’ve become almost symbolic of the latter, so I’m being criticized as a Silicon Valley sellout.
For Pilat, however, it is part of the natural history of life. “When the car was invented, people were terrified of it. People ran out of the cinema in fear when they first saw a train coming towards them on the screen. is not the technology that we fear the most, but the change, and I think when it comes to technology, we have to realize that in this industry there are a lot of good people who realize that robots have to respect the natural world which surrounds them.
Embraced by some of the biggest names in the tech world, Pilat has since painted for board members of SpaceX, Tesla and several other visionary companies shaping the future of the world. Commanding enormous fees, his art became considered essential among corporate collectors on the American West Coast.
“It’s a sector that attracts great minds so I’m sure it’s not robotics that you need to be wary of; personally. I’m much more concerned about where the metaverse and social media are heading.
Determined to show new ideas via the old language, that is, the web, Pilat hopes to one day do for Silicon Valley what Diego Rivera did for the working class through his work. Bold and unapologetic in its style and commitment, it is certainly the art that has captivated not only America’s billionaire visionaries, but also curious audiences intrigued by Pilat’s groundbreaking approach to art.
Yet despite this, it is not the masses that Pilat seeks to please, but rather the machines themselves.
“I work for the machine,” she says. “It’s my dream that one day the robots of the future will look at my portraits and say ‘these are my ancestors’.”
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