For the past five years, Sam Spratt has been reshaping the concept of painting, he was the cover artist for pop culture giants, but felt his creative rights were gradually disappearing in layers of approvals and middle management considerations, the blockchain provides a new carrier for memory.
This spark gave birth to Luci, a Renaissance-style myth involving skulls, pilgrims, and masks, whose chapters now exist as high-resolution oil painting illusions on Ethereum.
IX. The Monument Game turns a canvas into a multi-player arena where 256 collectors etch love letters, riddles, and even ASCII graffiti directly onto the image. Spratt's latest work (Masquerade), a new chapter in the (Lucy's Story) series, premiered in early 2025, continuing the story of (The Monument Game) and expanding the story, but this time it showcases new content through new narratives, new Lucy Masks, and new interactive structures.
In the following conversation, Spratt explains the guardrails that keep this collaboration productive, shares why he gave away hundreds of new masks to his community after a record-breaking sale, and returns to a single obsession: guarding the soul of art, and the identity associated with it, in a resilient enough system to transcend our collective oblivion.
OpenSea: Can you take us back to the moment when you realized that the blockchain might be the next big thing for the art world? What made you think that at the time? Why did you feel it was worth giving up your comfortable past work?
Sam Spratt: From a distance, its appeal lies in the fact that I feel a certain distance is being shortened, a certain gap is being bridged, helping memories, or something like it, to survive. Most of the art I created before was created for the masses, covering various pop culture media: music, film, television, video games, comics, etc., and I did it in a way that, years ago, I inadvertently found myself being an invisible hand, helping to realize the worlds of others.
At the time, I was constantly struggling with the feeling of 'who I am', which was either lost because of memory, middle management, or time. Although it was of my own making, and although I began to see the cracks in reality, it wasn't until I saw how people were walking out of my existing bubble that I knew how to get out of it. The most basic attraction was that in art and blockchain, I felt a wild culture where no one needed to ask permission to create anything, or to pass through some kind of filter of acceptability.
Despite the various pseudonyms, the foundation of this culture seems to lie in the preservation of the origins of creation and its contributors, memories survive, and these things exist not only because of the blockchain, but because it reminds me of what I took for granted at the time. Human memory seems to survive by jumping to a more powerful host: songs, stones, servers, and the blockchain is ready for war, upheaval, and change, and I happened to see it when statues and temples were destroyed during regime change, it needs to survive like a dog: kill one node, and a thousand mirrors can continue to breathe, I was attracted by this natural redundancy.
What I'm projecting here is a feeling for a series of technologies, but if I look back, this technology seems to help memories not disappear, especially when I feel like I've unexpectedly lost a large part of myself. By minting each painting on Ethereum, I'm timestamping my work, and this ledger represents the source of my identity, just as when a piece is collected, that line of code, that transaction, is the source of another person's identity. In this exchange, there is an opportunity to build relationships and connections - art begins with the image, but can extend into the network.
The story of Luci also echoes this, so far my use of it relies on external resources, but the energy it consumes is to survive in a more powerful host, storing bytes on IPFS or Arweave makes the hash of the file its address, so any perfect copy must resolve to the same on-chain record, otherwise it will expose itself as having been tampered with, storing the observations written on my painting by others on the chain preserves the location, time, creation, relationships, and personalities of the connections between the works.
There are many ways to pass on identity and origin: museum registers, foundations, cloud drives, and legal certificates all play a role, but none of them can resonate poetically with my veins and roots. I firmly believe that it will become the basis for our future development and the basis for our personal creations in an increasingly networked species.
OpenSea: Your work has a distinct Renaissance style, but it exists in a massive amount of pixels on-chain. How do you strike a balance between the imperfections of art and the precision of digital? Does knowing that collectors can zoom in on your work change the way you create?
Sam Spratt: My work is far from pure or precise, but it is definitely full of the tension of trying. Anything that someone else discovers is what I was originally looking for for myself. Therefore, no matter the scale or magnification, that tension - that pursuit of bringing ideas from the mind into the world through effort - whether in a single work, a peripheral series, the systems that weave them together, or how they are shared - marks the pursuit of growth.
Become better through craft, connection to time, tell a story that is independent of tools, tell a story of atomic nodes reconnecting in the space above and below this world.
OpenSea: You call Luci a 'refracted self-portrait', what personal moment prompted you to depict that birth scene in the first chapter?
Sam Spratt: I clearly remember how I felt when I painted the first work (The Birth of Lucy): full of dramatic enthusiasm, eventually collapsing, and starting over. Although it seems dramatic years later, I was ready to deal with it at the time.
I was standing in Brooklyn, losing love, friendship, life, self-awareness. About ten years ago, I struggled to climb, but I felt like life was quietly slipping away from under my feet. On a cold February morning, I looked at this postcard that had immersed me for ten years. Every brick, every beam, every piece of glass that once felt solid and reliable now felt like time was passing and changing in an instant. I could see its decay and my own disintegration within it. All the energy in the world that creates solidity will break atomic bonds and turn into ether if left unattended.
I looked back at that friend, the only friend who was with me when I was in trouble, and a new feeling welled up in my heart: this feeling of the gaseous, turbulent cracks in everything was not a terrible moment or trauma, but an interesting gift I had inadvertently created for myself, showing how unprepared I was at the time. It was a low point, but a beautiful moment because it meant I could try again in the same life, paying more attention to what I had overlooked the first time.
Bring your mistakes into the light refraction, and it becomes a prism, bending through the perspectives of others, until all our seemingly separate ruptures begin to share a spectrum.
OpenSea: There are many mysterious symbols and relics in the wasteland around Luci. How do you decide what needs to be explained directly and what needs to be left as clues for the community to explore on its own?
Sam Spratt: I strive to communicate fully in order to close the distance between each other, that is, I try to convey to the outside world the external boundaries of a system so that people have the conditions and motivation to participate.
At the same time, I try to convey to the outside world the inner motivation, or core, of its creation, so that people can understand me a little and understand the motivation for its birth. As for everything that is not said, which is most of what is not said - any topic around 'the meaning of something' is for exploration - a wall set up to protect and reward the curious.
OpenSea: The Monument Game and Masquerade have turned the digital canvas into a living entity carrying hundreds of voices. Did you know that the painting could also become a community-driven project?
Sam Spratt: Yes, its participatory elements were conceived at the same time as the painting and the story.
Two chapters focus on the act of 'gathering' from starkly different perspectives - gathering together, sharing ourselves with each other, saying goodbye to that drifting scroll - that dull, fluid experience that the internet's heartland lures us into, and instead harnessing the network's edges to spark curiosity and expression.
I became interested in using raw tools rather than dazzling tools in network art, a static piece of art I created, the words of others, and a map to mark each other - or in everyday application terms: the photo app on a phone, Twitter, and Google Maps, it's a simple and familiar thing in strange places.
To inspire others to truly break their daily routines and participate, I think we must dedicate ourselves to our own delusions so that others can gain something, even if it's just a glimpse, and achieve something.
I pour energy, time, thought, and output into showcasing life and its many paths, seeing if I can inspire others to also put in energy and output - at the same time, my work is covered with a layer of light, combining their efforts with my common heritage, hoping to leave a little trace in the work or in life.
OpenSea: Designing these week-long or multi-week competitions around a piece of art is risky. What safeguards or game design principles can keep it efficient?
Sam Spratt: Not much, word limits, breaking routines, building trust, pursuing closer goals, winning victories, the standard is not luck, but personal creativity and the vulnerability to put it out there.
OpenSea: What's the most surprising observation a player or masquerader has etched into the Monument or Masquerade? How has it affected your understanding of these works?
Sam Spratt: In both (The Monument Game) and (The Masquerade), I've observed things that have impressed me because they tell me that many types of gatherings can happen in very strange places, perhaps the stranger the better - in this case: in the metadata link coordinates on top of digital paintings.
When I write observations, I usually get something personal from strangers, viewers, and collectors of my work. No matter how seriously they take the task, I have a responsibility to protect the points they place and the words within them.
There was an apology left on a flower for a sister who died too soon; there was a letter placed on three different birds, this letter began in the Monument Game and continued in the Masquerade, written by a father to his children, to be found after his death; there were songs, audio logs, ultrasound images of people's unborn children, and IPFS links that were updated as the children grew, placed on my own daughter's paintings; there were games and cryptographic puzzles made by outstanding engineers, with hints asking for specific masks to be made to describe every detail of them; there were love letters, poems, warnings, jokes, criticisms of the power dynamics and internal arguments of my committee, and direct acts of destruction in the form of ASCII art dicks.
The point is not to preserve a surprising or great observation, but to preserve all types of forces that drive movement in the ecosystem.
I find it easier to digest in a meeting where you can see all types playing their roles in a common space. You can see the diversity that makes up the ecosystem. When you start picking favorites or discovering patterns, you start to see people's subsystems talking to each other, sometimes even inspiring each other to give more.
The Player version showcases the diversity of human contribution, while Lucy's Masks broaden the connections between people - each person's contribution becomes the seed or inspiration for the birth of the mask.
OpenSea: X. Masquerade was the largest NFT art auction in three years, but your next move was to give away masks to storytellers. Tell us about how you made this decision.
Sam Spratt: It's a big question, and I guess it's because I don't live in a vacuum. I wouldn't have enjoyed sales like Kanbas without the people who came into my life before, those who collected my work before, either through sales or through active participation, or even just through the initial bidding, ultimately led to the birth of 'Lucy's Skull'.
It's easy for us, especially for artists, when we give life to our work with our hands and brains - when we are closely connected to our labor - to imagine that any good that can happen stems from our own efforts, and that because we are fully invested in our work, anything that can go wrong is someone else's fault.
There is a vast system in the traditional art world that separates artists from the distribution or results of their work, ideally allowing artists to focus on their art, but it can also have a ripple effect, deepening the illusion of artists working alone, preventing them from connecting with broader forces and ecosystems.
Take the 613 masks: there are far more masks prepared for collection than there are actually collectable, but I decided to give most of the masks to those who have contributed energy to my work so far for a simple reason: we haven't reached the end of history yet, so I think it's important not to act like we have, not to be greedy, to leave some of your creations for others to consciously pick up, to be grateful for freedom, and to use it to understand how it spreads.
The space to give, even when I first started doing art and someone paid me $20 for my work, was huge to me, so I tried to take advantage of it. It took many years, over a decade, to transform that energy into the next and the next, giving me space and time, removing fear, and getting closer to myself as an artist, not only feeling connected to my work but also to the world, so now I have to take risks and spend time exploring the edges of what I want to say and how to say it - this is not random, but because of the collective movement of the people who are participating with me across cycles.
The scale and intimacy of what I developed early on for Chapter VII wouldn't even be an idea without the space created by each attempt and everyone's contribution. To create the hybrid system behind Masquerade, I broke everything I knew as a painter and ultimately exhausted myself, merging into the feelings of the participants.
But this wasn't done by one person or for me, it was done by my wife Rachel, by Alex, Chrisly, Ashlin, and Nifty Gateway Studio, by friends like Benny and Joey, by every player, Skull, by Lanett, Chikai, Max, Austin, G9ralt, and the stories woven from the lives of hundreds of people, all of which converged into a compound accumulation of energy and collective support, in a cycle of effort and restraint, rather than an endless stream of momentum.
Seasons and cycles each have their function, and part of Luci's momentum comes from my enjoyment of watching how they rhyme, how they change, and how they relate to each other. I find that this lengthens time and connects me to it. It makes me realize how insignificant the initial support can be, and how it eventually becomes something bigger if you take action and prepare for the cycle. Strive, converge, harvest, sow, and plan for the next cycle.
With that in mind, the reason we give away masks, and pick others to receive the masks commissioned to these people, is to observe what happens if we distribute computing power to various nodes, establish a donation mechanism so that they are not randomly distributed, nor are they airdropped to the crowd like a t-shirt cannon, to thank those who bring such free flow to life, allow them to participate in the growth of the story, cherish and pass on their contributions, screen followers, and see who is willing to join them in the development of the story.
Even if someone leaves, being able to observe what happens when the work and its value provide people with a small protective wall, allowing them to create something more freely, means a lot to me. Even loss has meaning in its repetition and helps drive change.
OpenSea: Overall, what changes do you hope to see NFTs bring to technology, community, and the traditional art world's perception in the coming years?
Sam Spratt: I rarely spend time on 'hope', but perhaps what really excites me is that we are working together, in tiny details, to build its future. In the past few years, every time I have created a work and it has sparked with other works, whether it is ten pieces of the story, or the Skull, the Player, or Lucy's Mask, it has opened up endless possibilities for me, and this excites me, this last chapter feels like an explosion to me, it is more interesting and challenging than anything I have touched so far.
If that's how I feel in my little Luci world, where no ironic poison can disturb the constant stream of inspiration and curiosity - I think that feeling is everywhere: the burst of synapses, artists constantly challenging themselves, no matter how the traditional art world sees it, it doesn't matter until the time is right. The traditional art world has some qualities that we can learn from, as well as bloat, fear, and stagnation. I don't think these are unique to tradition or institutions, and even digitization is not immune.
As individuals, entities, or movements, each of us may encounter some bottlenecks on the road ahead - habits, patterns, logical cycles that bring order to our circumstances and rationalize them until we (hopefully before it's too late) are naturally forced to break these bottlenecks and accept new things. I feel that many people feel that we are in some kind of deadlock, and that it is essential to accelerate the recognition of this technology, this community, etc., but everyone is defending their position, otherwise they will die in the attempt, whether they are old-school or new purists, building new alliances takes time.
Artists, collectors, and platforms are eager to form this perception, driven by some motivation - they want to strike a pose and claim that this is all art history in the making, all some kind of revolution, but if you zoom out the timeline, it all seems like a mess to me - it just takes time to find form, perception is constantly changing, watching artists use the tools of the time, constantly cutting with the same sequence of ripples as the water flows slowly, until the land collapses and the path begins to change in its natural direction.
I focus on what I can control. Technology will change, tools will evolve, communities will split, develop, and transform, institutions have opened, closed, and will open again, and my understanding of all these components will shift, while Luci's story has nothing to do with all of this - it's on our devices now, will be on museum walls this year, will leap to the big screen and new media, becoming more tactile in one direction and more networked in the other.
I think if raising children has given me any belief: the key is to keep it all going, to spend time with our creations, to extend our participation so that the next child can play again.
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