Primitives (PRIM) are a bespoke visual language and the building blocks of my art practice stored on the Ethereum network.
I believe the foundations of artistic creation should be as revolutionary as the art itself. While we can verify ownership today, what about the DNA that makes art uniquely yours?
This framework enables me to establish a verifiable record of my artwork’s fundamental elements—its DNA—through NFTs.
When I create new artworks, I can connect them to Primitives, proving not just who created the artwork and where it originated, but also defining what it’s made of at its core.
They establish a relationship that ties my entire art practice and each artwork to these fundamental elements. This also makes it possible to explore connections across series, editions, and 1-of-1s, all linked by shared properties—creating a dynamic layer for my entire art catalog.
As a fully onchain art practice, Primitives create a first-of-its-kind intra-related catalog where each artwork remains verifiably linked to its primal elements.
This approach transforms the way provenance, structure, and relationships among artworks can be explored in a networked environment, setting a new standard for how artists build and connect their catalog on the blockchain.
The term “primitive” is used similarly to how we describe the fundamental elements of art, such as line, shape, or color. These are the basis from which more complex compositions are created.
More specifically, Primitives (capital P) form the core of an emotional vocabulary, stored immutably onchain as verifiable artistic building blocks. This includes 100 unique emotion-color pairs, each with seven attributes—like intensity, harmony, and complexity—assigned a numeric value.
This framework enables broad interpretation, growth, and endless composability—by me and others—functioning as a living language that expands alongside the evolving catalog.
Beyond my own practice, Primitives introduce a novel approach to artistic documentation that could serve as a foundational model for other creators exploring on-chain methodologies.
By establishing a verifiable and immutable record of an artwork’s building blocks, this framework offers a potential industry standard for artists seeking to encode their creative DNA on the blockchain.
Drawing from my studies in emotional intelligence and my background in design, I developed a bespoke emotional vocabulary for artistic inquiry.
In March 2024, I shared an early version of my design and visual thinking outputs. Through this exercise, I developed 13 palettes with 87 color-emotion pairs, which became the early foundation for this framework.
By structuring Primitives as an interconnected system, each artwork becomes part of a larger visual and conceptual network rather than an isolated creation. This allows for emergent relationships to surface—across series, editions, and one-of-one pieces—by linking them through shared attributes and properties.
The framework invites recursive exploration, where artworks not only reference their origins but also contribute to the evolution of the system itself. This approach turns my catalog into a living, adaptive archive, where each new work enriches and refines the broader artistic language.