Intuition is the accumulated intelligence of experience. Thirty-five years of looking at images, making images, understanding what works and why — that becomes a kind of fast, pre-conscious knowing. But intuition has a structural limitation. It can only see as far as the experiences that built it.
Intuition can only see as far as the experiences that built it. After thirty-five years, that means blind spots embedded so deeply you can't see them directly.
What the Blind Spot Looks Like
It's not experienced as a blank space. It's experienced as completeness — as the sense that the image is finished. The blind spot doesn't announce itself. It presents itself as resolution. What breaks that false resolution is usually external — another set of eyes that doesn't share the same conditioning.
The Specific Technique
I take an image I believe is close to finished and run it through AI analysis processes that map what the machine sees — dominant forms, color relationships, spatial hierarchies, pattern structures. I then compare what comes back against what I thought I was building. The gaps are where I look.
Where Intuition Remains Essential
Everything before that final stage is intuition. The question that starts the work. The sense of what form it wants to take. AI doesn't replace any of that. The machine has breadth I don't have. I have depth it doesn't have — a sustained inquiry running for thirty-five years. The collaboration between those two things is what the current work is about.