My Favorite
Hallucinations

Ai-Da.

My very smallest work. The original is the size of a postcard.

I was experimenting with woodcut and still had quite a lot of ink on my roller, and I didn’t really know what to do with it. So I just kept making prints. The black stains are that ink, on thick, beige, postcard-sized drawing paper.

It lay on my desk for quite a while, and at some point I saw it and started drawing on it with pencils. It became (as so often in my work) a Christ figure. At least, that is how I see him.

Of course, I could not have been more surprised when this attribution came in. Not only because I had never heard of Ai-Da and thought it was a truly wonderful story, but of course also because that “over a million” stayed with me for a delightfully long time. It felt like a bizarre kind of victory. Over what, or over whom, I have no idea.

This artwork was made by Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist. It is a detail of the painting called A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing (2024). […] The artwork made history when it was auctioned at the renowned auction house Sotheby’s for over 1 million dollars, a record sum for an artwork made by a robot.

Napoleon.

The soapstone sculpture of myself is not finished yet. To me it shows someone making bubbling noises with his mouth, or blowing bubbles with his own spit. Certainly not the world-famous Mr Bonaparte.

The funny part: according to Google, Napoleon disliked the statue and had it hidden away. Mine is still tucked away in my studio, because it needs more work.

The image shows a detail of “Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker”, a colossal statue by the Italian artist Antonio Canova. […] Napoleon himself was not pleased with the statue and ordered it hidden, as he preferred to be depicted in his military or political role.

Worlds apart.

I had so much fun with this series. The huge differences between the artists: from world-famous to an anonymous psychiatric patient. And it just kept going.

It is so interesting to let it all sink in. I love reading the texts. And the titles: very instructive, they give me inspiration, because I never really have titles myself. Sometimes they give me ideas, and I often start calling my work by them in my head.

I can never get enough. The more the merrier. So I enjoy it enormously when my drawings set off a whole flood of names, titles and stories.

It was the same in my law practice in the Diamantbuurt in Amsterdam, a neighbourhood with so many different nationalities. I often joked that I didn’t need to go on holiday at all, because the whole world came to introduce itself at my desk. All those remarkable names, stories, customs. And now, in this strange and unexpected way, I experience that again.

And apart from all that: I thought my work had turned out pretty well myself ;)

From almost in the bin to the Louvre.

Every answer on this page comes from one drawing. I photographed it twice with my old iPhone, in bad light. Lucky for me: the photos came out dull, one brownish and one greenish, with soft edges. To Google Lens, that apparently looks old. Very old.

So it started to see old masters. In the first photo it found Leonardo da Vinci, four times. In the second it found a hidden self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, visible only under X-ray, and, twice, the landscape behind the Mona Lisa.

In between, the same drawing was a Wilton carpet, a flat wart from a medical book of 1955, an elephant’s eye and, under a microscope, a stoma on a plant leaf. When I later scanned it in its real, much yellower colours, it became Odilon Redon, Wolfgang Tillmans and Hilke Diers. One drawing, 30 attributions in total.

To be honest, I thought it was a failed, ugly thing. But it has given me my most famous attributions. The Louvre, wow!

Marian Ruzamski.

Sometimes a day goes completely differently from what you had in mind. As so often lately, I was happily photographing my work and feeding it to Google Lens. I enjoy it so much, and along the way I get to know so many art movements, artists and artworks. But sometimes something really gets to me. Like this MFH from 25 June 2026.

The first hits were great fun again. Expensive works, famous names. The Seven Sorrows of Mary. Really? For a drawing of mine that Google had earlier taken for a police sketch of a suspect.

And then, suddenly, hit number 3. Auschwitz. As if I held my breath for a moment. That place. Through my own drawing. A drawing I made during a sleepless night, in very little light, and later went at with mark making on my iPhone. And that is what triggers this story at Google.

What a gift. What a discovery. I was filled with gratitude that I now knew this. I felt I should have known it. Because yes, my own family did not survive Auschwitz either.

The artist of this specific base drawing is Marian Ruzamski. […] Ruzamski was a Polish painter and draughtsman who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War and died in 1945. In the camp he secretly portrayed fellow prisoners. […] His portraits show no camp numbers, striped uniforms or outward signs of the Nazi terror. He drew the faces purely as psychological portraits, with deep humanity, to protect the unique identity and dignity of the individual.

The main facts match two sources: the biography by Tadeusz Zych and the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen. One detail does not. Google says Ruzamski handed his drawings to fellow prisoners shortly before he died. According to the biography, a fellow prisoner took care of them after his death.

A cartoon of a Dutch politician? Or Hundertwasser?.

I showed Google a photo of one of my green portraits. In the Google app, Lens described a surrealist portrait. In AI Mode, it became a cartoon, based on a drawing tutorial for the Dutch politician Alexander Pechtold. A further response in AI Mode described the creator as an anonymous internet user.

Straight after, I showed the same photo in the Image Search app, with Google selected. It “strongly resembles” Hundertwasser. Then, in AI Mode, it was his painting Irinaland über dem Balkan, 1969, painted in Rome between 14 and 16 November.

The photo did not change. I don’t know why the answers did. I only record what they said.

“This artwork is a surrealist portrait of a humanoid figure with a striking green face and a bright red mouth. […] The composition explores the human desire to be seen […].”

“This is a digitally edited illustration or cartoon drawing based on a step-by-step tutorial on how to draw the Dutch politician Alexander Pechtold. […] The basis: the striking pear-shaped green head structure […].”

“The exact identity of the artist who made this particular digital edit is not publicly known. The image is a so-called user-generated creation […].”

“The selected area shows an artwork with a green face surrounded by a thick black outline. This image strongly resembles the visual style of the well-known Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. […]”

“This particular painting is titled Irinaland über dem Balkan (often referred to in English as Irinaland Over the Balkans) and was created in 1969. […] The painting was made by Friedensreich Hundertwasser in Rome (between 14 and 16 November 1969). […]”

A compressed car? Really?

This is my attempt to model an owlet in wax, to cast it in bronze as a present for my father. (Sorry, Dad. Still hasn’t happened.)

Google saw one of César Baldaccini’s famous Compressions. I looked him up and read that he is so famous, he is simply known as César. Cool!

In my dreams, mine is his Compression from 1969 in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. To me, that place is magical.

This is a sculpture by the French artist César Baldaccini (1921–1998). It is one of his famous ‘Compressions’, in which he presses everyday objects, such as cars, into abstract sculptures.

€ 3,300.

I found this canvas on one of my walks through Amsterdam, abandoned beside a pile of rubbish. Of course, I took it home. It was quite a walk, carrying that enormous thing through the city.

Someone had already made a start: grey acrylic, a few black smears. I kept what was there and began turning it into a face. You can just about make out the eyes and nose.

I have a habit of rescuing other people’s abandoned paintings. Don’t tell anyone, because they’re my little goldmine. You’d be surprised what people throw away. And thrift shops are full of them too, often for next to nothing.

I like starting with what’s already there, rather than a blank canvas. That’s how I see life, too.

By then, I was feeding just about everything I made into Google. This one came back as Robert Hettich’s Vereint, 2022. Abstract. Categories: Impressions and City. And a price tag of € 3,300.

I was ridiculously proud. I carried that report around with me for the rest of the day. Google has spoiled me since, but I’ll never forget that first price tag.

And the painting wasn’t even finished! Like a little kid, my immediate thought was: imagine what it’ll be worth when it is.

I’ll admit it: that’s how I build my confidence. In my own peculiar way.

The image shows an abstract painting with the title ‘Vereint’ by the artist Robert Hettich. • It is an acrylic painting on canvas, stretched on a frame. • The work belongs to the categories ‘Impressions’ and ‘City’. • The painting was made in 2022. • The price of the painting is € 3,300.00 including VAT.

My Singing Monsters.

I drew it on a tiny sheet from the notepad my parents kept next to the telephone.

Monkeys walking, or jumping. A sun with a little face, a bird, and in blue on the left, I think, the moon. At the bottom a flower and, of course, grass.

Google saw a T-Rox and other monsters from a video game.

This child’s drawing shows various creatures from the well-known mobile game My Singing Monsters. The drawn characters can be recognised by their specific shapes: • T-Rox: The large, grey, dinosaur-like monster in the middle with the striking lower jaw and big feet. • Clamble: The smaller, also grey monster on the left with the characteristic built-up segments and big round feet. • Pango: The pink-blue bird at the top with a beak. • Potbelly: The plant monster in the bottom right corner with a pink flower bud. • Sun and elements: At the top right a little sun has been drawn, and at the top left a blue element or mask can be seen (possibly the cold or ice element).

And then it read my signature.

On 8 August 2026 I sent my portfolio to Galerie Maalderij in Diepenheim. While I waited for their answer, I drew like mad. This drawing is one of them.

I had never signed my work “Ekemio” before. Sometimes just EKE, mostly only the date. That day, I dared.

And then it all came at once. The gallery selected me for an exhibition. At the thrift shop I found a pair of overalls that fit me perfectly: a childlike confirmation that I was on my way to becoming a real artist. (Whatever that means exactly.) And at 21:00, for the first time, Google named me as the maker. Fist pump.

An hour later I showed it the same drawing again. This time I had cropped the photo so the signature was gone.
Google said: Anna Munk.