NFT Creator – Cointelegraph Magazine

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With a total art­work val­ue of $24 mil­lion Trevor Jones is one of the Top 10 most suc­cess­ful cryp­to artists worldwide. 

Trevor Jones’ jour­ney to cryp­to art star­dom start­ed the same way as many cryp­to noobs: His port­fo­lio went way up, he failed to take prof­its, and the price came crash­ing down wip­ing out the paper gains.

A tra­di­tion­al painter, Jones always want­ed to explore the inter­sec­tion of art and tech­nol­o­gy, and he exper­i­ment­ed with QR code oil paint­ings in 2012 and dived into AR art in 2013. 

But it was his 2017 invest­ment in Bit­coin that sparked deep curios­i­ty in what this new world of cryp­to and blockchain was about. After get­ting rekt in 2018’s cryp­to win­ter, Jones turned his atten­tion from cryp­to trad­er to cryp­to painter. He says:

“I caught that bull run and made a lot of mon­ey and then lost a lot of mon­ey in 2018. It all went up and all came crash­ing down.

“I real­ly fell down the rab­bit hole and got com­plete­ly excit­ed about the space and the peo­ple. I was fol­low­ing who­ev­er I could on Twit­ter, the likes of Vita­lik Buterin and John McAfee and char­ac­ters like that. Very quick­ly, I start­ed hav­ing thoughts that this is some­thing I would like to explore with my art.” 

The Eccentric - John McAfee by Trevor Jones
“The Eccen­tric – John McAfee” by Trevor Jones at Cryp­to Dis­rup­tion Exhi­bi­tion. (trevorjonesart.com)

Cryp­to art was almost non-exis­tent as a genre in 2018 with­in tra­di­tion­al art cir­cles, so Jones took it upon him­self to hire a com­mer­cial gallery to stage a cryp­to-themed exhi­bi­tion where he show­cased some of his first orig­i­nal cryp­to art at the Cryp­to Dis­rup­tion Exhi­bi­tion.

“The 12 paint­ings I did were all inspired by the cryp­to space, and from the new per­spec­tive I was com­ing in from, I didn’t know a lot about it at the time. I focused on some of the char­ac­ters, such as Satoshi Nakamo­to, ideas and themes like the bull and the bear, hodling and rid­ing the wave. It was kind of me fig­ur­ing out how to visu­al­ize this space through these paint­ings,” he said. 

“I sold almost every­thing from the exhi­bi­tion to anony­mous col­lec­tors around the world where they paid me in Bit­coin and Ethereum. It real­ly blew my mind because nor­mal­ly when you go through an art gallery to sell work, you don’t get to meet the col­lec­tors for the most part, it’s all done behind closed doors. You’d hope­ful­ly receive mon­ey two to three months down the line when the gallery pays you out.” 

“To get paid imme­di­ate­ly was just so eye-open­ing. A few of the paint­ings were actu­al­ly sold before the exhi­bi­tion even opened. I was just post­ing some images on Twit­ter and some­body would reply say­ing they liked it and how much is it? I’d tell them a num­ber, and they’d just send me some Bit­coin, and the sale was done. It was just the most sur­re­al thing.” 



Oil paintings to NFTs

With a path sim­i­lar to Josie Bellini’s, from cryp­to artist first to NFT artist sec­ond, Jones recalls Coin Fest in April 2019 in Man­ches­ter being a piv­otal moment. David Moore from Known Ori­gin tried to explain to him why he should be inter­est­ed in NFTs.

“Com­ing from the per­spec­tive of a tra­di­tion­al artist who had a very suc­cess­ful exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings that were sell­ing between $5,000 and $12,000, I was grap­pling with the fact that NFTs at this time were only sell­ing for about $20 or being gift­ed,” Jones says. 

“It didn’t make sense in my head that I should sell a dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a paint­ing for $30 when the phys­i­cals were being sold for five figures.”

But Jones con­tin­ued to inves­ti­gate the world of NFTs, tap­ping into new­found rela­tion­ships with the likes of Alot­ta Mon­ey, Pas­cal Boyart and Coldie. He paid par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Matt Kane and Coldie in the back half of 2019 who were start­ing to make sales in the hun­dreds or thou­sands of dol­lars and “start­ed to think maybe there’s a way that it makes sense to bring my work togeth­er with a dig­i­tal counterpart.”

He says he was ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant out of con­cern for col­lec­tors of his phys­i­cal art who had paid top dol­lar. “I felt that it would be dis­re­spect­ful to then sell that paint­ing for $30, but I was still learn­ing about edi­tions and all the nuances of the space at the time,” he says.

The Cana­di­an artist was an instant suc­cess when he final­ly decid­ed to take the NFT plunge. His very first NFT titled “Eth­Girl,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion with NFT art leg­ends Alot­ta Mon­ey, broke the record for the high­est sale on Super­Rare, sell­ing to Mod­er­at­sArt for 72.1 ETH ($10,207 at the time of sale). 

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“Alot­ta Mon­ey is the most amaz­ing dude. I worked with him on ‘Eth­Girl,’ which was inspired by the Picas­so piece ‘Girl with a Man­dolin.’ It was a big oil paint­ing I did, and he ani­mat­ed it. It was still super ear­ly days in the NFT art scene, but it caused a huge bid­ding war between Mod­er­ats and Whale Shark and end­ed up break­ing records.” 

“Every­body was talk­ing about it because this was real­ly the first time that I think artists, includ­ing myself, real­ized we could actu­al­ly make a liv­ing from sell­ing dig­i­tal art through NFTs. It was real­ly a piv­otal moment I believe in the space. It raised a lot of eye­brows to where we might be head­ed.” Check it out by click­ing the “Play” but­ton in the tweet below.

Personal style

Com­ing from a tra­di­tion­al art back­ground but with a love of tech­nol­o­gy and an appre­ci­a­tion for his­to­ry, Jones says his style is hard to label, but his aim was to be a “social real­ist in this space — to cap­ture moments in the cryp­to space but also in the real world.”

“I don’t real­ly have a unique style, but my work is always con­nect­ed to the long his­to­ry and tra­di­tion of paint­ing and art his­to­ry. I stud­ied art his­to­ry at uni­ver­si­ty for five years. I’m some­what of an anachro­nism in this space of cryp­to; here’s this crazy inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal new world and then some old painter dude comes in and starts work­ing away, and peo­ple like what I’m doing.” 

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“I’ve been inter­est­ed in tech­nol­o­gy for a while with my pre­vi­ous work paint­ing QR codes and explor­ing AR back in 2013, so I think that’s prob­a­bly one of the rea­sons why the col­lec­tors in NFTs accept­ed me with open arms because there’s a his­to­ry of my curios­i­ty in tech­nol­o­gy and innovation.” 

Notable sales to date

Genesis Batman
“Gen­e­sis” — Trevor Jones and Jose Del­bo col­lab­o­ra­tion: Sold on Mak­ers Place for 540.86 ETH ($204,445 equiv­a­lent on the date of sale) on Oct. 18, 2020. Includ­ed this Gen­e­sis Bat­man 1‑of‑1 sale for 302.5 ETH ($114,000 equiv­a­lent on the date of sale).

Castle Party

Jones, who has lived in Scot­land since 1999, has put his own spin on what an NFT IRL event should look like with his Bit­coin Angels Cas­tle Par­ty. The event brings artists and col­lec­tors togeth­er for a two-night celebration. 

“With Bit­coin Angel, my life changed entire­ly in sev­en min­utes, and hav­ing spo­ken with a few big­ger col­lec­tors on Twit­ter, one sug­gest­ed I throw a cas­tle par­ty. At first, I thought it was a stu­pid idea, but after sleep­ing on it for a day or two, I came to real­ize it was a great idea.” 

“I have an oppor­tu­ni­ty through this cas­tle par­ty to thank all the peo­ple who bought one of my art­works. That’s real­ly how it start­ed off, to invite all the own­ers of Bit­coin Angels and a way of giv­ing back to my com­mu­ni­ty, and it’s grown from there.” 

The 2023 cas­tle par­ty will be held in France from Sep­tem­ber 3 to 5, with hold­ers of Jones’ art­works receiv­ing dis­count­ed tick­ets. More infor­ma­tion here.

The Oath Coronation NFT

To cel­e­brate the coro­na­tion of the new King, Jones recent­ly teamed up with the Evening Stan­dard news­pa­per and Apol­lo Enter­tain­ment to release an open-edi­tion NFT titled “The Oath” to own a piece of history. 

It was a free mint dropped on Nifty Gate­way, with 20,200 being mint­ed, which set a record for an open-edi­tion mint on the platform. 

“I thought it was a cool oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­ture a moment in his­to­ry and get peo­ple excit­ed about dig­i­tal art and what NFTs are. The Evening Stan­dard is one of the biggest U.K. pub­li­ca­tions, and this was a chance to cre­ate some­thing with them to get dis­sem­i­nat­ed out into the real world,” said Jones. 

Which hot NFT artists should we be paying attention to? 

Jones cites four artists who were part of the #ArtAn­gel­sNFT series he cre­at­ed to shine a spot­light on emerg­ing artists. 

Saint MG (@SaintMG1) — Artist and archi­tect from Colom­bia. Lost Angel in the dig­i­tal renaissance.

Nurart (@NurArt_) — Visu­al artist from Cuba. Weaver of symbols.

Richard Masa (@RichardMasaArt) — Abstract-sur­re­al­ist from Paris.

Maria Fyn­sk Norup (@mariafynsknorup) — Con­cep­tu­al self-por­trait artist from Den­mark. Emo­tion­al storytelling.

“Art Angels could be con­sid­ered some­what of a Shark Tank show meets the dat­ing game. It’s where we’d con­nect artists and col­lec­tors. It’s been life-chang­ing for some of the artists involved. Saint MG made a 1‑of‑1 sale on Super­Rare and some oth­er sales and sold about $9,000, which is a lot in his home­town of Colombia.”

“Nurart from Cuba has also made life-chang­ing mon­ey from some sales and is such a great artist. Richard Masa is absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal, just an amaz­ing artist, be sure to check him out. Maria as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er is real­ly spe­cial — her work just takes you to places.” 

Favorite NFTs in your wallet:

La Peste Bleue” by Alot­ta Money 

®Evo­lu­tion” by Alot­ta Mon­ey (gift­ed by ModeratsArt) 

(r)Evolution by Alotta Money.
“®Evo­lu­tion” by Alot­ta Mon­ey. (Known Origin)

Twit­ter: twitter.com/trevorjonesart 

Link­tree: linktr.ee/trevorjonesart 

Web­site: trevorjonesart.com/

Greg Oakford

Greg Oakford

Greg Oak­ford is the co-founder of NFT Fest Aus­tralia. A for­mer mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist in the sports world, Greg now focus­es his time on run­ning events, cre­at­ing con­tent and con­sult­ing in web3. He is an avid NFT col­lec­tor and hosts a week­ly pod­cast cov­er­ing all things NFTs.



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