In February 2026, David Krut and gallery director Ame Bell met Jonathan Goschen, director of Vela Arts Projects, at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Jonathan’s booth featured a painting of flowers in a vase by Alexis Schofield. Schofield is a Cape Town based painter creating impressionistic compositions from found photographs, his personal archive, using AI-generated images. Using charcoal, ink, and oil on raw canvas, he builds meaning through layered materials and textures.
After visiting the booth, Jonathan suggested to David that Schofield visit and explore printmaking at the David Krut Workshop. David was drawn to Schofield’s treatment of the canvas surface and his textural, blended imagery, and extended the invitation.
Schofield’s process is deliberate. He feeds still life images — in this body of work, Manet’s flower paintings and the pieta—into an AI generator he has trained on specific aesthetics. Another frame of reference Schofield draws from is found footage such as the Apollo moon landings and local news media. He is interested in how the technologies of recording create their own aesthetic. This was originally black and white, later processed into RGB colour, this reprocessing fascinates Alexis. He iterates until satisfied with the result, then recreates the AI reference as a smooth, plasticized image.
Due to the artificiality of the process [AI image generation] I was interested in images and textures that look synthetic, such as plastics and shiny materials. This was also influenced by the social media filters that made everything sparkle. As the AI models got better I would update these style folders with previous generations that I had been happy with in order to keep consistency with what I was looking for. – Schofield 2026
Workshop Focus:
- Shift from oil on canvas to monotypes replicating artificial digital surfaces. Monotypes have a smoothness due to the flattening of the paper through press.
- Focus on still life compositions rather than complex collages
- Test monotype techniques for smooth textures and layering
Alexis arrived at the workshop eager to begin working with printer Roxy Kaczmarek. In this collaboration, Schofield explored monotypes through a combination of oil and water-based mediums, working in the realm of AI in various iterations, aesthetics and finally the completed works that present colour, texture and pictures in smooth almost plastic-like futuristic guises.
“I wanted to get this feeling of alienation to come across in my palettes, in my image choice. This feeling of being outside,” says Schofield.
The painterly nature of oil-based monotype was the ideal technique to start working in a collaborative print studio space. Although monotypes are painterly it is not the same as painting and Alexis faced a challenge of how to achieve the aesthetic he desired. In the end Alexis and Roxy worked out a process of layering water-colour-stained paper, with multiple painted monotype plates printed on top. Through repetition of layering and repeating imagery while exploring monotype techniques Alexis’s printing process mirrors AI’s own iterative refinement, creating a full circle between digital generation and physical execution.
An initial body of work evolved from the collaboration. This initial interaction with the Workshop will continue in October with a second visit by Alexis where he will continue to explore the project and expand on the body of work. The prints were launched at the David Krut Arts booth as part of Nkhensani Mkhari’s showcase, In Good Company at the FNB Art Joburg 2026. For more information contact [email protected]