Over the last week, I’ve traded messages with Aaron Gonzalez, an independent Los Angeles-based artist who recently began trickling out PlantSwap NFTs, a 1000-deep collection of unique hand-drawn houseplants on the Ethereum Blockchain. Below is our interview, edited for clarity. I personally purchased four PlantSwap NFTs priced between .01-.018 ETH, one for each member of my family. Being one of the first 50 holders, I also received one free PlantSwap NFT. I was not compensated for this coverage.
Aaron, I think I told you this already, but I discovered PlantSwap NFT by literally typing the word “Plants” into the search bar on OpenSea. I enjoy gardening because it’s a form of task meditation, a relaxing activity that keeps my anxiety levels down. So what drew you to plants? Or same question asked a different way, why do you draw plants?
I totally relate to your gardening reference. Drawing and painting plants give me a similar sense of satisfaction and productivity while keeping my stress levels down. My artwork is mainly inspired by my environment. At the start of the pandemic, I began painting a lot of dream-like interior settings and home decor pieces which eventually led to my love of illustrating house plants.
My girlfriend loves house plants a lot more than myself and knows everything about them. Our apartment became loaded with plants during the quarantine period and really kept us positive and at peace. And now I can’t stop drawing them haha. I also love how the variations of house plants are endless, considering the type of plants, vessels, patterns, and personality types these house plants can have.
Personally, I appreciate the clean lines of your drawings. I’m happy to see your characters devoid of distracting accessories and whatnot. And the colors, my goodness, the colors! What role do you see color playing in your work?
I appreciate you noticing my intention of not wanting to oversaturate the plants with too many details and accessories at the moment, but I probably get too carried away with the color haha. Color is everything! Digital art lets you achieve these bright glowing colors with the RGB color spectrum.
Every plant is hand-drawn pen to paper and then brought onto my Ipad where I digitally paint them. I try getting similar bright colors in my acrylic paintings on canvas with fluorescent paint, but it’s not the same. I think the color in the artwork is the main source that brings these plants to life.
I read in your bio you grew up in the Central Coast area of California. I know that Dr. Seuss drew inspiration for his Lorax Truffula trees from the Cypress trees that grew along that same stretch of coastline. Can you remember the first plant or tree that you drew? Are there any specific types of native California plants that inspire you?
I had no idea Dr. Seuss was based near the Central Coast, but I am incredibly inspired by his work. When I first started painting at 17 years old, I would go to the local beaches and mountains and paint plein-air paintings, such a beautiful area out there. Now, I draw and paint from imagination where I take inspirations from real life and create them from memory without the stress of making them look realistic. I’m pretty sure Dr. Seuss had a similar process where we personify elements from nature in a fun and imaginative way. I love the world he created and my dream is to get PlantSwap to a similar level.
I also try not to learn too much about the specifics of house plants, so that it doesn’t interfere with my imaginative interpretations. I’m more interested in the aesthetics of plants. My girlfriend is a plant expert and my sister is a biologist, so I’m not totally clueless about plants haha.
On your website, it states that “PlantSwap’s long term goal is to become an animated series and stream on a top streaming platform.” Can you tell me a little bit more about your animation experience?
I’ve been making gifs and publishing them on Giphy for a couple of years now, including a few house plant animations. My account has over a billion views now, which is weird to think about. I think you can search AaronGonzalez to find them. In July of 2020, an Ad Agency reached out asking if I would design animations for a documentary on Netflix called The Minimalists: Less Is Now. The animations are very simple in design with a minimalist aesthetic and appear briefly throughout the doc.
That process really showed me how possible it is to create my own animated series, especially with the high demand of all these streaming platforms, who are hungry for lots of quality content to compete with each other. My personal animation style is inspired by early Disney animations where I hand-draw my animations frame by frame. Bringing humanity into animation by hand drawing them is really important to me, even if the animations are super simple.
To quote the band RX Bandits, oftentimes I find myself feeling like an “analog boy in a digital world.” I dig that PlantSwap has a roadmap that includes physical objects, such as mailing custom stickers to PlantSwap holders, exclusive merch drops for holders, and 500 hardcover books for the first 500 collectors. Why was it important for you to have this physical element integrated with PlantSwap NFT?
The NFT Marketplace feels a lot like the Zine Festivals I would sell prints, stickers and books throughout LA. I got excited when I realized I can incorporate these elements into PlantSwap. So now I’m thinking a lot about how I can create items that are both digital and physical. For example, I started thinking about the possibilities of sculpture both physical and digital. Or digital wearables in the metaverse and physical merch available on my website.
I have to say, I’m extremely grateful for all of the support I’ve received with PlantSwap at such an early stage. It feels like all of my art experience over the past 9 years is finally coming together. There is so much I have planned with PlantSwap and am fully dedicated to growing with our PlantSwap family.
For more info:
Website — PlantSwap NFT
Linktree for Artist Aaron Gonzales — PlantSwap Aaron | Linktree
