Hi everyone, I’m Aaron, and I joined this community because I’ve learned that art is humanity, emotion, and intention made tangible. I discovered this through studying works like Death Stranding 2 and Arcane - pieces where every frame carries deliberate meaning, where creators chose artistic integrity over commercial safety. Hideo Kojima, who created Death Stranding, says his body is “70% movies” - meaning he needs constant input from other art forms to create. I’ve realized I need the same. As someone building systems for human alignment, I need to witness how artists maintain intention through their practice. I’m working on something called AlignCore, which tries to do with human purpose what you do with visual observation - capture something essential before it disappears. The challenge I face is the same one you face: how do you preserve the human element when everything pushes toward efficiency and mechanization? This morning, listening to a song about someone who gained everything but lost their humanity in the process, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears in my car. It hit me that artists are the ones who refuse to let that happen. Every piece you create is proof that intention still matters, that taking time to get something right is not inefficiency but necessity. I’m here to learn from your practice of maintaining humanity through repetition, through showing up even when inspiration doesn’t. Your courage to make something meaningful in a world obsessed with metrics is exactly the kind of courage I need to witness and understand. I work in systems and code rather than paint and canvas, but I believe the act of creation with intention is the same. In the coming days, I’ll share more about what brought me here - including the song that moved me this morning, and why I believe we’re all fighting the same battle against the mechanization of human expression. My hope in sharing this journey is that it might spark courage for someone here, or perhaps even inspire an art piece. After all, whether we work in pigment or purpose, we’re all trying to preserve what makes us human.

I think I probably fit more traditionally in the bucket of "designer" rather than artist... but super excited to be a part of this community. Art takes courage and gives us courage, I think. ♥︎ Here's a painting I did a few years ago when I was playing around with learning watercolor a bit!