Liberation – that’s what Canadian artist Alexey Préfontaine, most commonly known as aeforia, found upon joining the NFT space. 

Known for his blending of landscape and portraiture, aeforia’s pieces are all about colors, balance, and emotions. According to CryptoArt.io, he’s sold 559 pieces to date, totaling about $1.1 million in sales.

On the nft now podcast’s debut episode, the 3D illustrator talked about his journey going from agency work to NFTs, his creative process, and his February release “Five Fears.” Starting his journey with NFTs after collaborating with artist Gavin Shapiro, known for his signature flamingos, aeforia quickly found collector feedback on a piece he’d created for himself, not as a commission. 

“I just blindly jumped in,” he says. “That was surreal. And so there was a switch in my mind, and I just fell in love with the space.”

After finding success in his drops and selling his pieces for amounts that he would have never seen from commissions, he knew the space was worth exploring. But what drew him the most towards NFTs was the direct connection artists are now able to have with their collectors, and the audience on his own pieces.

Though he’s only done seven drops from September 2020 to March of this year, aeforia has quickly become a top-selling artists in the space. His best-selling piece, Intrusive Thoughts, was a collaboration with artist Shapiro and sold for $36,314.24 in April of this year. 

Talking about his creative process, aeforia says his release schedule clearly mirrored his practice – precise and patient. Though not super linear, he starts by drafting the pose of the main character. “Just the body language of those characters can really hold a lot of emotion,” he says. From there, he adds colors, landscapes, and animation to fill the piece with emotional impact. It is something he looks to maintain in collaborations, creating pieces that feel like one even across varying mediums. 

His latest release, “Five Fears,” was arguably his most personal and emotional creation to date. Released on Nifty Gateway in February, the five-piece collection addressed fears that he feels all artists have. Disappoint, Dishonest, Left Behind, Mistake and Vulnerable proved to be an opportunity for the artist to showcase his vulnerabilities with new and old collectors alike. Focused more on the piece’s impact than on the numbers, the collection’s intentionality and thoughtfulness shone through. 

“For the first time ever, as digital artists, we can actually be artists,” he says. “I really see people actually being able to live from their art, and not from their client work or commissions.”

At the end of the day, it’s a paradigm shift – NFTs have allowed artists to live off of their own creative vision, not just a commercialized or commissioned version of it. 

“[It’s a] freedom to create for myself and share it to the world instead of spending weeks, all my time just working for someone else,” he concludes. 

Be sure to hit subscribe and check out the full episode here.