My 2026 Artist’s Statement

How to boil my entire creative mind into 564 words

“I’m too hungry for nuance.” – Dave Sokolowski (November 2025)

This is my refined Artist Statement that was honed down from this longer draft statement. Let me know if you’d like help writing your own!

Why do I make the art I make?

I have stories in my mind that won’t go away.

Also, my ADHD brain runs a zillion miles an hour and just needs to show off all the cool stuff he’s thinking about.

Also also, art can change the world, and I want my writing to help hold back the tide of AI-slop and disrupt the Status Quo by helping people see a new perspective.

That’s why I write.

This is another way to make a statement. Photo by Marty O’Neill on Unsplash

Subjects and Themes I Explore

People are the worst monsters, sadly, and I find the mystery and corruption of our souls to center most of my work. I also like weird things, people, places, and events.

I love Noir mysteries that explore the grey spaces where we hate to live but always end up. I also need to reflect our modern day, and its hypocrisy, technofascism, and blind late-stage capitalist absurdity always end up in my work.

It’s a weird time to be alive and I just reflect that.

How I Work

Every morning I get coffee and write first thing, trying for at least one hour. I listen to ambient space synth or classical or this amazing guy playing the lute for three hours.

No coffee or headphones, but it’s close enough. Photo by jules a. on Unsplash

I also read every day, usually 20-30 minutes before bed. There are so many amazing books but we only can do so much. That’s what I can do.

What Makes my Work Distinct

For today, as I (re)start my artist’s journey, before I’ve published my first novel, I can talk about my writing voice and what I want my fiction to be. Once my first novel is out, I will update this statement as I write another.

I want to meld three things in my fiction: a strong essayist voice that I’ve developed over 40+ years of writing (which you’re reading right now); a wild and energetic imagination that develops tense, interesting, and unique stories; and my lifetime of studying what makes stories, characters, and ideas work… all coming together in a swirl of absurd Noir mysteries and existential thrillers.

If you like my essays here, and you like a good mystery with a unique perspective (because who doesn’t), then I look forward to sharing my writing.

How I Use and Don’t Use AI

I don’t use generative AI in any of my work, ever.

And I try to avoid any AI-created work (it’s not art) in my every day. I support artists and real people struggling to bridge the chasm of creativity and vision.

Those are my people.

On Essays and an Artist’s Life

We artists are under attack (again). The Status Quo wants us scared and hidden and out of sight.

Instead, now is the time to fight. Not each other though. If you see someone using generative AI, just ignore them or at least send them something to read. But no more shouting, no more anger at other “artists.”

Remember, it takes more energy to be angry than to create with positivity.

Let’s stick together, lean in, and be true and honest to our art.

That is the best path forward.

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This year I’m pivoting my work here to spend more time discussing how we lead the fight against the Status Quo by creating art and letting everything else slide away.

Also, I’m working on a new mystery novel and will be sharing some of my own process as I figure out how to research it and write it and market it and sell it and all the other stuff that goes on behind the scenes. It’s a crazy process and I’m absolutely terrified.

But I really want to help people find their souls through art, and I can help with developing some practical and necessary skills.

More artists need to declare our intentions around generative AI, just so we can say our piece and move on. Then we need to go and create and share and support each other, build communities and stick together.

If people don’t want to come along then that’s on them.

So that’s what’s coming next from me.

Be well — more soon