BAYC artist Seneca presents new NFT work at Art Basel

Original Artist of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Seneca returns to Art Basel to present several new pieces from the Portrait by Seneca collection.

These works, however, are very different from her PFP illustrations, and tell of her experience of “waking hallucinations” she saw in her childhood.

Seneca is known for her psychedelic approach to her physical and digital work. Seneca, who has worked as an illustrator for most of her career, has developed a very strong sense of composition.

Much of her work depicts a single subject, often in a wide variety of colours in a wide-eyed cartoon style. These characters’ faces have no specific identifiable emotions, but a mixture of human-like features determined by the viewer. 

As Seneca shared in a Rolling Stone feature in January, she’s best known in the NFT space as BAYC’s original lead artist, but it took a while for the role to be recognized. 

“Not many people know that I did these paintings. This is terrible for an artist,” she said, noting that the monkey’s body was her painting “exactly line by line,” while others talked about the fact that the artist made the original work. 

Now concentrating on original work, the artist debuted her collection at last year’s Art Her Basel, a four-piece collection that sold out quickly.

On her website, Seneca describes her work as a muted but vibrant colour palette with surrealist expressions – “which fans and collectors can describe as ‘cosmic terrors and candy lands.’ Mix”.