7 March, 2022

Gabriella Anouk is a contemporary artist creating hyperrealism artwork with a twist using only colouring pencils. After many years of drawing commissions, she developed her new expressive Slime Series during the Covid-19 pandemic and shared her artistic journey on TikTok and Instagram. Gabriella developed an engaged fanbase of 400k+ who helped inspire her unique approach and style and she continues to engage with them as she develops the next series in her practice. In collaboration with London Trade Art, Gabriella has created 5 animated NFTs and is offering them for purchase, along with their corresponding A1 original print (1/20), on the LTArt website. Ahead of her launch and in line with International Women's Days, we caught up with her to discuss her project and ask her what it means to be a female artist within the cryptoart space today.

We’re very excited to launch your project tomorrow! Could you please tell us a bit more about it?

I started to share my artworks on TikTok during lockdown as it was the only real way my art could reach and connect with the outside world. I quickly fell in love with how natural it felt sharing my process and finished work digitally. I’d previously shared my art on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook but TikTok really took off which led me to explore different ways I could share my physical artworks in the ever-changing and exciting digital world. I kept seeing and hearing about ‘NFTs’ and after a little (a lot - still ongoing, most likely never-ending) research, I was hooked! My drawings are physical art pieces so being able to transform them into a digital asset is such an exciting concept for me. I’d never approached digital art wholeheartedly like this before but I’m so glad I did.

Gabriella Anouk (left) with LTArt CEO Francesca Casiraghi (right) at the opening exhibition of The Slime Series.

What was the inspiration behind your series of animated NFT artworks?

It was around this time last year when I started to feel dissatisfied with my art practice and felt like I needed a change. So I started to experiment with dipping my household objects in paint and dripping them in slime, photographing them hundreds of times and then drawing them. As mentioned before my pieces are hand-drawn but very bright in colour which lends them nicely to the creation of NFT art, and allows me to bring a different dimension to my artworks. The Slime Series is a series of large-scale colouring pencil drawings of fruit and vegetables covered in slime. By turning them into digital NFTs I was able to animate the slime aspect of the drawing which brought a whole new lease of life to the pieces.

What drew you to the cryptoart space?

A huge pull towards the crypto art space for me was the fact I could share my art digitally and reach an audience I may never have crossed paths with before or ever would have. It’s an incredible space and feels more like being part of a community than anything else. Also, as we are entering web3 and a digitally-led world I think it is important to be prepared and engaged in these developments.

The cryptoart art space has been notoriously male-dominated; how easy was it to enter the space as a woman artist?

It wasn’t easy to start off with. There’s a lot of ‘jargon’ around the NFT space like minting, gas fees, blockchain (and don’t get me started on all the twitter terms, GM, GN, Fren, COPE?!) which can easily deter someone from entering it. But if you allow yourself to be fully immersed in it by reading articles, listening to podcasts and following artists who are killing it in the space you learn about it quite quickly and discover that it really isn’t as ‘scary’ as you first thought.

In your opinion, what are the main challenges facing female cryptoartists when trying to make a name for themselves within this space?

I think it fundamentally goes back to gender inequality and the fact that male-dominated areas can come across as intimidating and scary at times. Women have been faced with discrimination from the beginning of time, so I don’t see how this is any different. However, I like to believe that women should use this inequality to our advantage and let it empower us to make a statement and break the stigma by leaving our feminine mark wherever we go. It’s up to women to create how we want the crypto space to work for us and pave the way for other women too.

Do you think that the cryptoart space is changing? In what ways? Do you think it will become easier for women to enter and navigate it?

I think it’s changing every second, yes, but in positive ways. I think people are becoming more and more creative in the use of NFTs. These hype projects are going to die out soon and we are going to see more projects with utilities to them and more collectibles instead of making 100X in the space of seconds. We are just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of NFT possibilities.

Once it becomes more mainstream I think women will see the powerful communities that exist within the space and will want to discover more about them. That’s how it happened for me.

Do you have any favourite female cryptoartists we should know about?

Anna Zhilyaeva’s work is pretty awesome. I also like Baeige’s work and her story.

How do you see your artwork evolving over the next 5 years? Are you hoping to pursue more cryptoart projects?

In the next 5 years? Wow, tough question - who knows what the space will look like by then! But yes, I hope to pursue more cryptoart projects in the future. The NFT space is so dynamic and hyper-competitive I want to explore unique ways in which to incorporate them into my practice.

Gabriella's 5 animated NFTs and corresponding A1 original art prints will be available for purchase on the LTArt website on Thursday, March 10th. Sign up to our newsletter and follow us on social to be the first to know once the works are live!