Kevin M. Powell

3D Modeling & Design | Interior Design

Independent interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of painting, video, and artificial intelligence to explore trauma, memory, and healing through socially engaged practice with veterans and cancer survivor communities.

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© Cayce Pollard. All rights reserved.

Work

As an interdisciplinary artist, I blend painting, video, and artificial intelligence to explore the fractured landscapes of trauma and healing. My work emerges from a deeply personal intersection—military service and a cancer diagnosis in 2019—that reshaped not only my body but my understanding of identity, memory, and survival. Through layered visual languages and emergent technology, I aim to create space for stories too complex or painful to be told in words alone.My process often begins with traditional painting—an intimate, tactile ritual where I re-enter moments of chaos, silence, and resilience. I paint as a means of grounding, giving form to sensations and memories that resist verbal articulation. These works are then photographed and fed into custom AI models, trained on a combination of my own imagery and archival footage from military operations and cancer treatment rooms. The result is a hybrid visual aesthetic—something between dream and machine—that reflects both the fragmentation and recomposition of self after trauma.Video allows me to reintroduce movement and time, essential elements when dealing with living memory. I use digital animation and AI-assisted morphing techniques to animate still paintings, layering audio from group therapy sessions, field recordings from deployments, and interviews with fellow veterans and cancer survivors. These videos become immersive environments—abstract, emotionally charged, and confrontational—that invite viewers to step into the ambiguous space between past and present, presence and absence.AI is not merely a tool in my work; it is a collaborator. I’m fascinated by how these models "misremember" or reinterpret my imagery, echoing the mind’s own distortions under psychological strain. The hallucinations of AI mirror the fragmented narratives of PTSD and long-term illness. In that sense, my work is less about achieving realism and more about arriving at an honest unreality—a raw truth shaped by dissonance, recursion, and transformation.I am deeply committed to community-based healing through art. I work with veteran support groups and cancer patient networks, co-creating pieces that honor shared experiences and individual journeys. These collaborative works often take the form of AI-generated animations based on group painting sessions or video portraits where the participants’ own art becomes part of the visual DNA. These projects are less about finished products and more about the process: bearing witness, being seen, and seeing oneself anew through creation.Ultimately, my practice is an act of survival—both physical and creative. It is about reclaiming narrative through a synthesis of mediums, where vulnerability becomes strength and distortion becomes clarity. Painting anchors me, video extends me, and AI challenges me. Together, they form a language complex enough to hold what I’ve endured, and expansive enough to offer others a space to begin their own healing.

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About Me

Artist & Community Collaborator
• Created multimedia works combining traditional painting, generative AI, and video to explore the psychological impacts of military service and cancer diagnosis.
• Led collaborative art workshops with veteran support groups and cancer patient networks focused on co-creating healing narratives through visual expression.
• Developed AI-generated animations based on participant artwork, integrating soundscapes from therapy sessions, interviews, and ambient recordings.
• Produced After the Scan, a video installation used in wellness centers and group therapy settings to initiate dialogue around post-treatment identity and recovery.
• Presented community-based projects in public exhibitions, emphasizing trauma-informed storytelling and ethical creative agency.
• Designed and implemented protocols for emotionally safe engagement, including opt-out options and grounding practices, after navigating a group trauma-triggering event.
• Facilitated interdisciplinary conversations between artists, therapists, and support workers on the role of emerging technologies in emotional processing and recovery.

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