Airiquel makes AI art that is immediately recognizable and difficult to shake. Her visual language is built from deep blacks, blood reds, neon accents, and what reads, from the outside, as a gothic-luxury atmosphere drawn from horror cinema, high-fashion editorial, and surrealist painting. You know her work the moment you see it.

That consistency is not a style choice. It is a worldview. What separates Airiquel from the crowded field of AI artists is the conceptual weight behind each image. She is not generating visuals. She is building a universe, one with its own internal logic, recurring tensions, and a particular obsession with the boundary between the human and the constructed.

Her practice sits at a genuine intersection: sci-fi and gothic sensibility, cinematic staging and surrealist distortion, luxury aesthetics and something darker underneath. The juxtapositions are not decorative. They carry meaning, or at least the pressure of it, which in AI surrealism amounts to the same thing.

What makes her work hold up is authorial coherence. Airiquel has built something rare in AI art: a body of work where each piece feels like it belongs to a larger whole. This is not a gallery of one-off prompts. It is a sustained creative vision that happens to use AI as its primary medium, and she treats that medium seriously, on its own terms.

She only began working with AI in late 2025. The fact that a voice this coherent and this distinctive has emerged in so little time is, on its own, a reason to pay attention to what she has to say.

In this AI art interview, she talks about the references and obsessions that feed her dark cinematic universe, the tools she relies on, and what she would tell other AI artists trying to develop something genuinely personal.

Her answers are specific, and they are honest.

INTRODUCTION

Could you introduce yourself?

Today, I would describe myself as a digital artist, but in many ways I see my current work as a continuation of everything that came before it. Photography, painting, filmmaking, and storytelling have all merged into a single practice.

I was born in Ukraine, raised between Ukraine and Russia, and currently based in Canada.

I’ve never stayed in one medium for very long.

Looking back, every stage of my life seems connected by the same impulse: the need to make things.

As a child, I made clothes for dolls, created jewelry from beads, and later learned to sew and knit clothes for myself. I wasn’t thinking about art at the time. I simply enjoyed turning ideas into something tangible.

That instinct followed me into photography, where I spent about ten years developing my visual language. My work was published in both online and print magazines, and photography became my first serious creative profession.

At the same time, I started painting abstract works in acrylic and oil, which eventually found collectors in different countries through online galleries.

Later, I moved into film and worked as an assistant editor on around forty television films. Editing taught me something photography never could: rhythm, structure, and the invisible mechanics of storytelling.

I never studied art formally. Everything I know came through experimentation, curiosity, and a willingness to move into unfamiliar territory whenever I felt I had reached the limits of the previous medium.

At some point, I realized I was no longer interested in creating images simply because they were beautiful. Photography had given me a lot, but I felt myself searching for something larger.

I wanted to build worlds, not just capture them.

That search eventually led me to AI and digital art.

How long have you been using generative AI? Do you use it professionally?

I started exploring generative AI in November 2025.

What attracted me wasn’t the technology itself, but the possibility of creating the kinds of worlds I could never fully realize through photography alone.

In January 2026, I started sharing my work on Instagram. Looking back, it’s almost funny how little confidence I had in those early months. I struggled to gain my first hundred followers and often felt that my work wasn’t good enough compared to what I saw from other creators.

Still, I kept practicing every day.

A few weeks later, I started seeing the first signs of progress, both in the work itself and in the way people responded to it. That gave me the motivation to continue.

Today, I feel much more confident in my creative voice and my ability to bring ideas to life.

At the moment, AI art is still a personal creative practice rather than my primary profession. However, I hope that one day it will become part of my professional life as well.

Which AI tools do you use the most? Do you have a particular method? Any settings, workflows, or habits others might not expect?

The tools I use depend on the type of project.

Midjourney is usually where I go when I want to break reality and explore ideas that would be difficult to visualize any other way. Nano Banana is where I build worlds that need to feel believable, cinematic, or emotionally grounded. For animation and image-to-video work, I primarily use Kling and Seedance, and I edit everything in CapCut.

That said, I don’t think of tools as the most important part of the process. The way I work is probably more defined by intuition than by software.

INSPIRATION

Where do you draw your inspiration from? Artists, art movements, images, emotions? What feeds your visual universe?

My inspiration usually doesn’t come from a fixed set of references.

Sometimes I’m simply listening to music and something clicks. It feels almost physical, like a spark, and visual fragments immediately start forming in my mind.

Most of my ideas begin this way.

When an idea appears, I don’t rush into execution. I usually write down a short version of the story first and let it stay with me for a few days before developing it further.

In terms of aesthetics, I don’t feel attached to a single visual style. I wake up almost like a slightly different version of myself every day, so I can’t really produce the same thing over and over again.

Some days my work is minimal. Other days it becomes much more extravagant and experimental.

That said, I am naturally drawn to melancholy, introspection, psychology, philosophy, transformation, and the idea of a hero’s journey through suffering and meaning.

I don’t really search for inspiration.

Inspiration tends to find me.

Sometimes I joke that I live inside a movie. Music, conversations, memories, random observations, and passing thoughts all have a way of turning themselves into scenes. Even when a project doesn’t become exactly what I imagined, it still becomes part of something larger.

How do you organize your visual research? Do you use websites, portfolios, or specific tools as references or discovery platforms?

My relationship with visual research has changed a lot over time.

About six months ago, I relied heavily on references. I had countless folders full of images, moodboards, and saved inspiration.

Today, my process is very different.

I rarely create reference folders anymore because I usually already know what I want to see. The image often exists in my mind before it exists on the screen.

Years of photography, painting, editing, and observation gradually built an internal visual library.

That doesn’t mean I never use references. If I’m exploring something unfamiliar, I may look for character design, clothing, or specific aesthetics.

But references are no longer the starting point.

For example, if I wanted to create a story about gangsters, I would first pull everything I already know from memory. Only after exhausting my own ideas would I start looking elsewhere.

I create the characters first, choose the ones that feel right, build the story around them, and only then begin constructing the visual world.

For me, visual research is no longer about collecting images. It’s about understanding the world I want to create.

Are there any non-AI artists who influence your work?

If I had to name one filmmaker who left a strong impression on me, it would be Gaspar Noé.

Musically, artists like Massive Attack and Moby have probably influenced me more than many visual artists. Music is often where my ideas begin.

As for literature, Mikhail Bulgakov has stayed with me for a long time. I’m attracted to works where reality and imagination coexist.

One photographer whose work I admire is Elizaveta Porodina.

That said, I don’t spend much time intentionally studying other artists.

My process is more instinctive. I collect fragments from films, books, music, conversations, life experiences, and random observations. Eventually, many of those influences become impossible to trace back to a single source.

If I removed every artist from the equation, my biggest source of inspiration would still be my own life experience.

Do you have a story to share about an idea that came from an unexpected source?

One morning, I was casually scrolling through Instagram when I heard an old Turkish song, “YALI YALI” by Neşe Karaböcek (Todd Terje Edit).

The moment I heard it, images started appearing in my head almost instantly. The more I listened, the stronger they became.

Normally my projects take time. I write notes, think about them for days, and gradually build the story.

This was different.

That same day I generated all the visuals and even edited a first version of the video.

For me, that’s extremely unusual.

I think experiences like that are the reason I don’t actively chase inspiration. Sometimes an idea arrives with such clarity that the only thing you can do is follow it.

I’ve also learned not to predict which projects will resonate with people.

I once created a piece with another artist as a collaboration and I was convinced would barely get any attention. Instead, it eventually passed 600,000 views.

Moments like that remind me that creativity and audience response are often impossible to fully control.

ADVICES

What advice would you give to someone starting out today?

If someone told me they wanted to become an AI artist, my first question wouldn’t be about tools.

I would ask:

Why?

What do you actually want to say?

What is your story?

What are you trying to show people that only you can show?

The technical side can always be learned.

Without a point of view, the work often becomes interchangeable with thousands of other images being produced every day.

If I had to choose the two most important things for a beginner, I would choose taste and having a story you genuinely want to tell.

Practice matters too. Create constantly. Experiment constantly. Combine things that don’t seem compatible.

Some of the most interesting work appears when different worlds collide. I have always enjoyed combining things that don’t naturally belong together. For example, the surreal imagination of Dalí and the language of high fashion. Unexpected combinations often lead to unexpected discoveries.

I also think many people make the mistake of chasing followers too early, copying successful artists, or locking themselves into a single style because it feels safe.

Growth often happens outside of those safe spaces.

People talk a lot about talent, but I think curiosity and persistence matter more than most people realize.

Many people stop creating because they want results immediately. It can feel frustrating to hit the same wall every day without seeing progress.

But sometimes people put down the hammer just before the wall starts to crack.

If you had to start over, what’s the first thing you would do differently?

I would spend less time worrying about numbers and less time comparing myself to other artists.

At the time, it was easy to focus on what I hadn’t achieved yet rather than on the progress I was actually making.

Looking back, I would have spent more energy experimenting, practicing, and developing my own voice instead of measuring myself against people who had already been doing it for years.

The turning point came a few months later. I started seeing visible improvement in my work, and I began receiving reactions from people that reminded me why I started creating in the first place.

If I could send one message back to myself at the beginning, it would be this:

Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.

Are there any mistakes you’d be willing to share?

One of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to control too much.

The more I tried to force outcomes, the worse the process became.

Over time, I learned that creativity often works better when there is room for discovery and surprise.

Another mistake was relying too heavily on references.

For a long time, I collected folders full of images and moodboards because I thought they would help me create stronger work. Eventually I realized that I was often looking outside for answers that were already forming inside my own imagination.

None of those things helped me become a better creator.

The work improved when I focused on the work itself.

Any unexpected tips about tools, methods, or your daily practice?

I keep a notebook full of ideas, fragments of stories, visual concepts, and random thoughts.

One unusual thing about my process is that I almost never work on a single project at a time. I usually develop three or four projects in parallel.

I also rarely finish projects immediately. Sometimes I leave a piece untouched for days or even weeks before returning to it. Distance helps me see it more clearly.

Another habit is that I rarely work in silence. Most of the time I’m listening to podcasts, often about philosophy, spirituality, or subjects that sit somewhere beyond conventional explanations. When I’m exhausted, I switch to music instead.

When I’m reviewing generations, I don’t have a strict checklist. Sometimes I choose an image because of composition or atmosphere. Sometimes I choose it because it gives me a feeling I can’t explain.

I’ve learned to trust that instinct.

In terms of tools, I don’t think software is the most important part of the process.

What matters more is developing your ability to recognize when something feels emotionally true.

Any advice on building a social media presence?

One thing I’ve learned is that building a social media presence is not only about posting work. It’s also about becoming part of a community.

Support other artists. Leave thoughtful comments. Reach out when someone’s work genuinely moves you. Join groups, participate in conversations, and collaborate when it feels natural.

A lot of people focus entirely on growth metrics, but I think relationships matter just as much.

As for posting, consistency is important. Perfection is not.

For beginners, creating high-quality work on demand is difficult because skill takes time to develop. My advice would be simple: create what feels meaningful to you and keep showing up regularly.

I also think people give up too early.

Someone can post twenty pieces and feel discouraged by low numbers, but twenty posts tell you almost nothing.

Creative paths are different for everyone. Some people spend years developing their voice before finding an audience. Others go viral almost immediately.

There is no universal formula.

That’s also why I’m cautious about giving advice on algorithms. If your goal is rapid growth, there are certainly strategies you can follow.

But if your goal is to build a genuine artistic practice, constantly adapting yourself to trends can become a form of creative compromise.

The most important thing I realized too late is that social media requires time.

Unless you’re a marketing genius, a creative genius, or very lucky, meaningful growth usually happens much more slowly than people expect.

A piece of advice you wish you’d received earlier?

I wish someone had told me that progress is often invisible while it’s happening.

You can spend weeks or months feeling as though nothing is changing, only to realize later that you’ve grown more than you thought.

Every artist arrives with a different background, a different set of experiences, and a different path ahead of them.

Some people appear to move quickly because you’re only seeing the chapter where they became visible.

You’re not seeing the years that came before it.

Keep going.

One day you’ll realize you’ve traveled much farther than you thought.

All images © Airiquel 2026