A JERSEY-BORN artist has had his work displayed on a giant screen in Times Square.
Jay Shaughnessy (31) – who creates work under the name Bstract – rediscovered his love for art during lockdown, and began uploading his artwork to sell online as NFTs.
An NFT, a non-fungible token, is a ‘digital collectable’ which provides a certificate of authenticity for a piece of digital artwork, music, or product. They cannot be copied, substituted or subdivided, but can be sold by the owner.
Each of Mr Shaughnessy’s pieces starts with an idea painted onto canvas which is then photographed, digitally manipulated and enhanced to create the final artwork. The canvases are then reused, so every piece in the collection exists solely as an NFT.
His pieces began to sell slowly at first, but Mr Shaughnessy’s work began to achieve acclaim when American tech businessman Mark Cuban showed one of his NFT pieces to his nine million Twitter followers.
Mr Shaughnessy was one of over 3,000 artists who applied to have their art featured in Times Square at the NFT.NYC event, and he described it as ‘incredible’ and ‘unbelievable’ to find out that he was one of the few hundred people to have their work selected.
‘Seeing it in real life just feels like two years of hard work had paid off,’ he said.
Mr Shaughnessy’s work is now also on display in the 0x17 Gallery in Manhattan until the end of May.
