A Conversation with Dan Flores (DTM) on Art, AI and the Artist Sandwich Method
The Artist Is Back, and the Timing Could Not Be Better.
Every so often a guest returns to Conversations with Tony Mobley and the whole room leans in. This week is one of those nights. Dan Flores, the artist known to many simply as DTM, is back at the table, and he arrives with something every creative person is quietly wrestling with right now: what does it actually mean to make art in the age of AI?
Wednesday, July 15, 2026 8:00 – 9:00 PM ET Live at conversationswithtonymobley.com
Why Dan Flores, and Why Now
Artists are living through the most disorienting shift their craft has seen in a generation. The tools are changing faster than the conversation around them, and too often the debate collapses into a single unhelpful question: is AI the end of the artist, or the future of art? Dan Flores refuses that trap. He is an artist first, and he treats these new tools the way a serious maker treats any new medium, with curiosity, discipline and a healthy dose of scepticism.
That is what makes this return so worth your time. This is not a lecture about technology, and it is not a panic about it either. It is a working artist talking honestly about how he keeps his own voice at the centre of the work while the ground keeps moving.
The Artist Sandwich Method
At the heart of the conversation is a framework Dan calls the Artist Sandwich Method, his own practical approach to keeping the human artist on both sides of the creative process, with the tools in the middle where they belong. It is a deceptively simple idea with real consequences for how you start a piece, how you finish it, and how you protect the part that is unmistakably yours.
Tony and Dan will unpack what the method is, where it came from, and how any artist can put it to work, whether you paint, design, illustrate or build.
What We Expect to Explore
Making Art in the AI Era
- Where new tools genuinely help an artist, and where they quietly flatten a voice
- How to experiment without handing over the things that make your work yours
- Keeping craft and intention at the centre when everything is optimised for speed
The Artist Sandwich Method in Practice
- What the method actually is, in Dan’s own words
- How to begin and end a piece as the artist, not the operator
- Simple habits that keep your fingerprints on the finished work
Advice for the Working Creative
- What Dan wishes more artists understood about this moment
- How to stay hopeful and productive when the headlines say otherwise
- Building a practice that can absorb new tools without losing its soul
Who Should Not Miss This
Artists, illustrators and designers trying to find their footing as the tools shift beneath them
Creatives curious about AI who want an honest take from someone who actually makes things
Anyone who has ever worried that the machine might matter more than the maker
Because the future of art will not be decided by the tools. It will be decided by the artists who are brave enough to keep showing up. This week, one of them is back.
Tony Mobley Host, Conversations with Tony Mobley
“The tool never makes the artist. The artist decides what the tool becomes.”