Vermeer’s Secret, Your Opportunity

David Hockney, my favorite modern artist, died yesterday at his home in France. He was 88.


I love his paintings, especially the ones from his days in California — bright, sun-splashed, colorful (VERY colorful) canvases, like this one:

Mulholland Drive by David Hockney


But my favorite Hockney story isn’t about a painting he made. It’s about a fight he picked.


In 2001, Hockney published a book arguing that some of the greatest painters — Vermeer, Caravaggio, and other masters — used optical tools (lenses, mirrors, camera obscuras) to create their art. They used tech to help them. Seventeenth-century tech, but tech, nonetheless.


The art establishment was furious. Because if Vermeer used tech to help, could we still call him a creative genius? Or was he — gasp! — cheating?


Most in the art world dismissed Hockney’s theory. Then a Texas software engineer named Tim Jenison set out to prove it.


Jenison had never painted anything in his life. But he built a simple optical rig based on Hockney’s theory (a small mirror, a lens), and he recreated Vermeer’s studio down to the window glass. He spent months painstakingly painting a full reproduction of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson.


A guy who couldn’t paint… painted a Vermeer.


(There’s a great documentary about it called Tim’s Vermeer. Hockney appears in it, vindicated and delighted.)


So, dear art critic… Did the lens make Vermeer a fraud?


I don’t think so. I side with Hockney on this one.


He knew: The lens didn’t choose the girl at the keyboard. The lens didn’t decide where the light should fall, or what moment was worth freezing, or why we’d still be staring at it 350 years later.


The tech simplified and accelerated the labor. The artist supplied the vision.

Every so often, a business owner asks me (usually in a half-whisper) “Isn’t using AI for my marketing kind of… cheating?”


It’s the same question those artsy-fartsy Hockney-haters asked.


The assumption is that the value of marketing lives in the manual labor — the typing, the formatting, the tech wrangling, the assembly.


Actually, the value lives in your stories, point of view, and judgment about what your clients want and need to hear. No tool has that. Only you do.


For years, I’ve cited the great copywriter Eugene Schwartz who said, “Copy is not written. Copy is assembled.” The raw material is already in you. The assembly is just labor.


When you deploy tech (including AI) properly, you reduce the labor. You accelerate the assembly.


Most business owners know what they should implement to get more clients (lead magnets, follow-up sequences, email campaigns, booking systems).


But they don’t implement. Or they implement for a while, lose momentum, and stall.


(Sound familiar?)


That’s why I built Implementum Now.


Here’s how it works: My team and I partner with you to build your story-powered marketing system — strategy, tech, assembly, maintenance. We handle all of it. We do it for you.


And here’s the part Hockney would appreciate: We can deliver this at a fraction of what it used to cost, in a fraction of the time because of our tech and the expert technicians who use it.


Our human experts — using high-powered automations and AI assistants — understand every strategy and tactic in our marketing playbook.


We choose and customize the strategies that will work best for you and your business. Then we build the system for you.


Tech simplifies and accelerates the labor. We supply the judgment. You reap the benefits.


The machine doesn’t make the art. But it sure makes the art faster.


Want to learn more? Reply with “Vermeer” and I’ll circle back with details.