

I drew a lot of comics as a kid, and not all of my art is dark, I will say. What did these initial illustrations look like? I see things and I hear things.” She said, “you should draw it out.” I have nightmares every night and they’re special kinds. There were times when I told my mom, “I suffer. And maybe that also added to why I express myself the way I do through drawing and painting.

I come from a very creative family, and they also taught me about visual arts. What did you do to cope with your dreams? I just was more concerned with my imagination than being present. I was fascinated by why this was happening to me.
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And because I was traumatized every night, I was trying to figure out how to leave my dreams every day, and that consumed my life and consumed my thoughts.

I think I just call it dreams in general because the type of dreaming - lucid dreaming - is very specific, because you're aware and then you have control over it, as opposed to letting the dream take you places. Why would you consider that a dream as opposed to a nightmare? If that happened to me, I would classify that as a nightmare. And I killed myself every night as a kid. And this might get a little bit morbid, but I think it was a matter of a bit of mental illness. And I was so conscious of it, and it was so draining. But for me, I had nightmares every night. And I say suffered, because people generally think that lucid dreaming is fun and cool.

And honestly, this is something that took me a long time to come to terms with, but I suffered through a lot of lucid dreaming. Does the surreal quality of your paintings have roots from that time?Īll Seeing Seneca – I loved horror, and I loved dark things when I was very young. I find a lot of creative people’s work was shaped by their childhood experiences. While sipping on an iced latte, she explains why being anonymous is essential to her identity, why she doesn’t mind people printing out her artwork, and reveals what aspiring Web3 artists need to be wary of. On a steamy July afternoon, Seneca sat down with me at The Beekman, a hotel in the Financial District of New York City. She is represented by one of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agencies, and has a bright path before her. Coindesk placed her on their “Most Influential 2021” list, Rolling Stone profiled her in a lengthy story, Vanity Fair name-checked her, and she went to the exclusive Met Gala afterparty. Today, Seneca is one of the NFT generation’s art stars. Yet, the most famous eyes she designed are the droopy ones belonging to the bored apes of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, capturing a disaffected IDGAF disposition that hit a cultural nerve. The final one-of-one piece of the collection sold for over 39 ETH, about $116,000 USD, in February 2022. And in another, filled the eyes with what looks like sweating flesh with blurry and flickering paint splatters. In one of her five paintings from her Genesis Series, which debuted during Art Basel Miami in 2021, Seneca filled the eyes with intertwining interpretations of birds, green vines, and human limbs. Seneca was so shy during that time, that, according to her, she was effectively “partially mute.” “I was very withdrawn, so I would just sit there and mostly observe everything going on around me, and also observe what's going on in my head.” Two decades later, Seneca’s visual interpretations of eyes still figure prominently in her name - the usage of “All Seeing” in her persona in combination with “Seneca,” alluding to the Roman stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca - and her work. They represented how critical her third sense (vision) was in navigating her own world. And these drawings looked like otherworldly comic book characters - sometimes appearing as illustrations of dolls with distinctively exaggerated eyes - because she preferred to live in her imagination, rather than her physical reality. But to make peace with the traumatic bedtime experience, she would “draw it out” the following day - taking her visions and drawing them onto paper, advice from her mother that became a daily coping mechanism. As a child, Seneca had lucid dreams that were so dark at times, she questioned her own mental health.
