portrait
generative art
00:59
2022
Nat Sarkissian is a San Diego-based generative artist working with code, digital images, video, and print, exploring landscape, light, memory, and natural systems through custom algorithmic processes. He got his start in programming at twelve through game design, a path that led him into graphics and eventually the early Processing-era generative art scene. His California landscape work draws directly from time spent outdoors, sometimes recreating a specific hill or view, sometimes absorbed more subconsciously, alongside Armenian cultural memory that runs through the work as a second undercurrent. As he's described it, each iteration of his landscape algorithms feels like a glimpse out of a car window on a drive up the coast, a pause on a cool morning hike, or a memory of tearing through sharp underbrush with good company. Rather than aiming for precise representation, he breaks a subject down into simpler geometric forms and leans into what the medium itself brings to the image. For Sarkissian, the process of generation is as much a part of the artwork as the final result: many of his pieces are built to be watched as they render, offering viewers a glimpse into how the work was made rather than presenting them with something static.
Sarkissian transitioned to working on his art full-time in early 2022, after years spent as a software engineer. His projects have been commissioned and presented by organizations including Bright Moments, where he held one of his first solo showings in Venice Beach, as well as Davis Editions, reGen, Art Blocks, Bonhams, Christie's, and Samsung Art.

Bardez is the Armenian word for garden. It is etymologically tied to an ancient word for paradise, but that link goes deeper than etymology. Gardens have always been small pieces of paradise for me, and hearing the word in Armenian triggers a flood of warm memories.
Memories of wandering around my grandfather’s garden, plucking ripe plums and figs from their branches.
Memories of playing in my parents yard, the scent of jasmine in the summer heat.
Of sun warmed tomatoes in my mom’s vegetable patch.
The smell of dirt and grass.
Mud on my hands.
Sun on my skin.
Memories of paradise.
I hope you enjoy these gardens I’ve planted, and I hope they remind you of some warm and wonderful memories.
Nat Sarkissian
generative art
portrait
00:59
2022