Hardley

Hardley is Aeneas Middleton, who mints as Hardley Davidson. He was born in 1980 and came up through the School of the Arts in Rochester, New York, where he learned photography and VHS editing, after first playing with drawing software on a computer as an eight year old. He turned down a basketball path for music, moved to St Louis with a thousand dollars and a CD of beats, and after two and a half years placed tracks with Nelly on the Longest Yard soundtrack. Production credits followed with Chamillionaire, whose album carried Ridin Dirty and gave him his first platinum plaque, and with Pretty Ricky, which gave him his first gold. When the download era gutted producer income around 2006 he put his savings into a degree in digital design and interactive media, learned Maya and Mudbox, wrote novels, made the self produced 3D sci fi film Cranium Intel over four years, and became an official PlayStation partner after shipping a VR game. He came to crypto art late in 2021. Nobody knew him as a visual artist, so every time SuperRare posted an artist to its Instagram stories he messaged that artist and proposed a collaboration. He did that fifty or sixty times and ended up with about sixty eight collaborations, which is what got him onto SuperRare and started his painting career.

He calls himself a multidisciplinary artist and refuses a single medium: oil and acrylic painting, photography, 3D, sound design and a little code. His painting is abstract expressionist, built in layered colour, and he cites Willem de Kooning and George Condo alongside the old masters. Most of his NFT paintings ship with the physical canvas, and he has made hybrid works with collectors' displays set into wood panels. He also collaborates constantly, supplying sound design and music to other artists' visual work.

• Roughly sixty eight artist collaborations, built by cold messaging artists off SuperRare's Instagram stories
• Oil Acrylic Paintings by Aeneas, his SuperRare painting series where each NFT includes the physical canvas
• Multi platinum music production credits including the Longest Yard soundtrack and Ridin Dirty
• Cranium Intel, the 3D sci fi film he made largely by himself over four years
• Official PlayStation partner after shipping a VR title
• Represented by Colonna Contemporary for physical work

On the show