A profile on crypto artist Gary Cartlidge and the philosophy shaping his work, from rejecting the traditional gallery system to finding purpose through crypto art during one of the lowest points in his life.
here’s a word Gary Cartlidge uses to describe himself that most artists probably wouldn’t choose: janitor. Not founder. Not visionary. Not pioneer. Janitor. The person who cleans up after everyone else and tries to make the space usable again.
Cartlidge (@TroyFitzpatric) has been involved in crypto art since 2018. He’s seen the boom years, the collapse afterwards, and the slow rebuilding phase that followed. What separates him from a lot of artists in the space is that he’s spent enough time around it to form a real perspective on how the industry operates, both the good and the bad.
That perspective started long before NFTs.
In 2005, an 18-year-old Cartlidge walked into Walsall Art Gallery with photography and paintings and no industry connections. His work was rejected, but he kept showing up anyway. Watching the kinds of artists who did get opportunities slowly killed whatever belief he had left in the traditional gallery system.
“It was never about the art,” he wrote on his site. “It was about whose rich parents had connections or what celebrity could bring people through the doors.”
Eventually he walked away from it completely. He got a normal job, went back to university at 25 to study Visual Communications, and somewhere during that period discovered crypto art. For the first time, there were no curators deciding whether he deserved access. He started selling pieces for a few dollars at a time and didn’t really care about the money. What mattered was that the work could exist without permission.
Ironically, he thinks the NFT space eventually recreated many of the same problems he originally escaped.
The gatekeepers changed, but the structure stayed familiar. Instead of gallery curators, there were Discord moderators and influencers controlling access through allowlists and hype cycles. Instead of celebrity connections, there were VC-backed projects flooding the market with oversized collections built more for speculation than artistic value.
His criticism isn’t really that NFTs failed. It’s that the space repeated the same patterns traditional art already had.
That mindset carries directly into his work. Cartlidge’s pieces deal heavily with themes like social decay, AI, simulation theory, capitalism, and the psychological cost of modern life. Titles like “21st Century Suicide Vest,” “Break or Die – Welcome to 2026,” and “What I Must Become & Kill That I Cannot” feel less like branding exercises and more like fragments of larger internal conversations.
Visually, the work sits somewhere between glitch art, cyber-surrealism, and controlled chaos. He describes the process as stream of consciousness, starting from emotion and building outward, but the symbolism throughout the work is deliberate.
His Calculess collection describes itself as “symbolising the quantification and marginalisation of life,” which is probably the clearest summary of what runs through most of his art: a discomfort with the direction modern society is moving and the systems increasingly shaping human behaviour.
That’s ultimately what keeps his work interesting. It doesn’t feel engineered around trends or market demand. Whether people connect with it or not, it feels like it comes from a real place instead of trying to manufacture depth afterward.
What separates Cartlidge from a lot of people in this space is that his connection to crypto art was never really built around money.
He found it during a period where he was struggling heavily with debt, depression, and isolation. he spent years feeling directionless, suicidal from the graps of scoiety and its structure.
Then in 2018 he came across KnownOrigin and started making digital art.
At the time he was selling pieces for a few dollars and didn’t really care about the sales themselves. What mattered was that he was creating again. That something finally clicked back into place.
“I truly believe cryptoart saved my life, I know for certain if I hadn't have found this it was a matter of time.”
He never elaborates further than that.
A lot of what defines Cartlidge’s perspective on this space starts making more sense once you understand that background. The Janitor persona, the frustration with hype culture, the criticism of empty speculation and performative engagement, it all comes from someone who attached real personal meaning to art long before NFTs became an industry.
For him, crypto art wasn’t just another market to participate in. It gave him something to hold onto at a point where not much else did.
I don't care if it kills me, I won't lie down."
- Gary Cartlidge
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