About 3 years ago i bought a highend computer and an Oculus Rift so i could paint in VR. i waited years for a sale. i never tried virtual reality and didn't know what is was. Tomorrow i make history. well VR art makes history but i have my own. At 70 i'm the oldest virtual reality artist I know of.
It is not age that should determine what you do. If you want to carve or paint or dance or sing and you still have physical capabilities to do so, you DARN WELL BETTER DO IT. In my case because I jumped in to the world of VR albeit blindly I was able to get in on this at the start. Digital painting was itself in the early stages but artists were beginning to join in and their numbers began to increase. Art was seen infrequently in the VR world except as it applied to gaming which got in early. I sat that one holiday season about 4 years ago looking at an App that would allow artists to paint not only digitally but in virtual reality and it was about to hit the market. My excitement grew and my pocket book ached as I found myself buying a high end gaming computer, a monitor, and the VR headset that would open this new world to me. I was lucky to have waited for the holiday sales though . My items arrived one by one and I set them up. And yes I did this by myself so all of you saying old folks can't use technology are wrong.. They can. Age doesn't automatically put you in the dummy category. As I set this all up I kept thinking 'well at least I will have a fun and relaxing time '. In truth I didn't even know that because I had never experienced anything like this. I put on my Oculus Rift headset and opened the QUILL app and something happened to me. I was hooked. I could barely drag myself away. Four years later i still can't. I found myself painting the picture around me.. i became a part of the painting itself. At times I found tree branches getting in my face and I caught myself trying to push them away. I felt like i was carving a painting. And then it dawned on me. Finally I could bring viewers inside my paintings as well. No longer were they left outside looking in. They too could be inside ART. Virtual reality has been an incredible journey for me and it has opened my doors of perception. I have seen art and art galleries pop up more and more with sales of VR art soaring to record highs as another new world , the world of Crypto money and NFTs rushes in to buy it all up. I find myself in a learning phase that years ago I might have scoffed at. So at 70 i am not looking for an assisted living home but trying to find out what on earth crypto art and NFTs are. I am not too old to keep learning and hopefully neither are you.
