Some pieces of art start with a blank canvas. This one started with a honeymoon trip.

My wife and I went to Riviera Maya early in our relationship and never really left, at least not in the ways that matter. We returned year after year, drawn back by the ruins, the culture, the people, and something harder to name. A feeling that this place had something to teach.

We also started collecting masks. Not souvenirs. Actual art, made by local artists, carrying the spirit of the place they came from. Our first mask came home from that first Mexico trip. It was the beginning of our love affair with travel and experiencing other cultures.

Sacred Council is my appreciation of Mexico and our experiences there.

My Own Vision

I knew going in what I wanted. Something tribal. Something ancient. Something that carried the layered mythology and iconography of the Mayan world but filtered through my own visual sensibility. I wanted to show respect by truly putting some of myself into it, and not just copying the culture's style.

What I didn't fully anticipate was how much work this was going to be.

Hundreds of parent prompts. Hundreds more targeted iteration prompts and edits. And then the hours of manual Photoshop work. AI doesn't hand you what you want. It hands you a starting point and then you fight for the rest, at least that's how it works for an artist with a clear vision and tenacity to accept nothing less.

The fight was worth it. The prints came back looking great and that told me what I needed to know.

Why This Piece Matters

I've been transparent about the fact that AI is part of my process with some pieces. That isn't going to change. But I also want to be clear about what that process actually looks like, because it isn't a shortcut. It's a conversation, a long and sometimes frustrating one, with a tool that is powerful but does not read minds. It requires you to learn to communicate in the way it needs you to.

The taste is mine. The vision was mine from the beginning. Sacred Council looks the way it does because I knew what I was looking for and refused to stop until I found it.

A culture that gave us so much deserved nothing less.

You can buy digital or signed prints of this now.