By @JustinWetch
This article was originally published on X on July 25, 2025. Join the discussion: https://x.com/24_Hours_Art/status/1948762194356961762
"I thought I didn't have any hope."
MaNiC tells me this about his time in the state hospital. The last stop for the mentally ill, where some people never leave. He'd been there eight months after a cocaine and ecstasy bender short-circuited his manic brain. At his absolute bottom, institutionalized in every sense, he couldn't imagine that one day he would video chat with Beeple. That Raoul Pal would write Twitter threads about his art and his story. That he'd become one of the most compelling voices in digital art.
But MaNiC has always been good at the impossible.
The Revolving Door
"I was born into dysfunction," he says matter-of-factly. Both parents were addicts. Government food filled the fridge, which became a source of shame when his best friend (at the time) noticed. “He told some kids in my school and it made me feel real ashamed. From that point on I started hanging out with kids that were more like me and my situation. I made a new best friend, he was also on welfare and he started selling weed at 13, and later progressed to selling coke.”
By seventh grade, he'd landed in alternative school. "Once you go there, you're with other troubled kids." The trajectory was set: smoking weed, pills, and drinking by 13, his first drug rehab the same year, then a mental health facility. At 16 came his first real hospitalization and a diagnosis of bipolar I, the more severe type.
"It was a revolving door," he says of his teenage years through early twenties. Mental hospitals, drug rehabs, back again. The cycle seemed unbreakable.
Lost in Delusion
The breaking point arrived during an extended manic episode in his early twenties. After a weekend binge of hard drugs with no sleep, reality slipped away. This time it didn't return for eight months.
"Delusions are when you're thinking things that are not real, like you have special powers, you're the son of God, the FBI is after you," he explains. "But when you're in it, you believe it's 100% real."
The short term mental hospital couldn't help. The medications weren't working. "When you're like that, they can't send you out into society." So they sent him to the state hospital instead.
The state hospital was "horrible." Violent patients. No privacy, no dignity, no hope of leaving. "Sometimes people in the state hospital, they'll never get out of there. They're just too sick to ever get out."
On a brief home pass, rather than return, he attempted suicide. "I was almost successful."
The MySpace Lifeline
Rock bottom has a way of clarifying things. After surviving, after relapsing again ("which is insane, but it is what it is"), MaNiC retreated to his mother's house. No more so-called friends. Just isolation and the internet, looking to make new connections.
"I ended up meeting my wife on MySpace," he laughs at the dated reference. She lived in Virginia while he was stuck in Florida. He kept his history hidden at first. "You're not gonna say, like, 'I have bipolar. I just got out of the state hospital.'"
His family thought he was crazy for meeting an internet stranger. "I didn't listen to anybody. I was like, 'I'm going.'" She was just as beautiful in person. More importantly, when he finally revealed everything about his past, she accepted him completely.
They've been together ever since. "She's the biggest blessing in my life," he says. "She really helped me.” They have a son who's now 13.
The Rejection Muscle
Before digital art consumed his life, MaNiC pursued acting and music with relentless energy. His grandfather's acting background had opened that door early. By first grade, MaNiC was performing in plays. Now, he still carries his SAG-AFTRA card.
"It's a tough business," he reflects. "There's so much rejection that you get used to it."
This rejection training would prove invaluable. While others in the NFT space crumbled at their first "no," MaNiC had already built what he calls "the muscle."
"The word no, I don't hear it. I'm like, 'All right, cool, you say no now, but let me come back to you in a few weeks.'"
Digital Awakening
MaNiC's art journey began modestly with Corel Draw, making album covers for rapper friends. "Some actually got far, made it pretty big." He then taught himself Photoshop, selling T-shirt designs through Print on Demand services.
The NFT boom of 2021 found him ready. He'd been "trying to make money online" for years, dabbling in crypto, teaching himself digital art. When he entered the space, he started with 3D work in Blender, sculpting abstract art.
Then someone compared some of his early work to @XCOPYART. "I didn't even know who XCOPY was," he admits. The collector sent him a @SuperRare link. "I saw the prices that some of the pieces sold for, and I was like, 'Oh my God, that's nuts.' I was like, 'Man, that's crazy. This is maybe it could be possible for me too.'"
Glitch as Biography
The glitch aesthetic resonates with MaNiC on a fundamental level. "It's very manic, actually, like glitch. It's fast. It's crazy. I mean, it just goes with my mania. I think it matches up."
He learned about pixel sorting through @kimasendorf’s work, incorporating it to convey movement. His approach remains intentionally subtle. "What a lot of people say they like about my type of glitch art is that it's not overtly crazy. I use it in certain areas, not overwhelming."
Experi-mental
His Twitter bio reads like a manifesto: "Experimental intuitive spontaneous expressionist." When I ask him to break it down, he laughs at the first word.
"Experi-mental. Yeah, experi-mental. Like with bipolar and stuff like that. So it's like experimental." The wordplay is intentional.
Initially resistant to incorporating AI into his art ("I feel like I'm cheating"), conversations with @0009ine and listening to @ClaireSilver12 shifted his perspective. "They made me look at it differently." Now he uses Midjourney as one tool among many, though never raw outputs. "I have to tweak it and add to it so it's more like me."
His toolkit spans mediums: Photoshop for animation, After Effects for glitch, traditional painting with unconventional tools. "I don't even really use paintbrushes actually. I use other tools like palette knives– even my hands sometimes."
The Meme Card Miracle
For years, MaNiC wondered if openness about his bipolar diagnosis had hurt him. Sales dried up. Bills mounted. His back injury prevented junk removal work. "I wasn't making any sales at all."
A friend reached out about the @punk6529 meme card competition. "You might wanna make a meme card. I can see you maybe winning." If selected, he'd make enough money to escape immediate financial pressure.
MaNiC created "Institutionalized." The title alone turned his darkest experiences into art. After sharing his story with the community, support flooded in. "I was number one by a lot. I was skyrocketing."
He won decisively, earning around $15,000. "I never seen money like that before." Beyond the money, it rebuilt his confidence. "It made me even more bullish on myself."
The Blondie & Raoul Effect
The real transformation began with a DM. @Blondie23LMD messaged about a piece he'd burned because some collectors said he had too much work available. "Oh man, I was interested in that," she wrote. Then: "Raoul Pal will be following you soon."
When @RaoulGMI tweeted about MaNiC to his 1.2 million followers, everything changed. "Made my art sales go nuts," MaNiC says. SuperRare sales exploded. Collectors swept up multiple pieces. Friends messaged warnings: "You need to transfer that ETH off your MetaMask."
Soon @beeple was reaching out for a video call. During their conversation, MaNiC thanked him. "If it wasn't for you, more than likely I wouldn't even know about this at the time. Your $69 million sale made so many people find out about the NFT space."
Making History
His 13-year-old son now tells friends, "My dad's an artist." The pride in MaNiC's voice when he shares this cuts through everything else. After a lifetime of shame about poverty, mental illness, and addiction, he's given his family something to celebrate.
"I'm so freaking grateful, man. I write a lot of positive stuff in my timeline about how grateful I am, and I really mean it. I had a rough time for a long time."
The transformation seems impossible when laid out linearly. From welfare to wealth. From state hospital to SuperRare. From revolving door to opening doors for others. From "I thought I didn't have any hope" to "I'm gonna make history."
"Life, you never know where life's gonna take you, man. You just don't know. I'm in the best spot possible. I'm blessed."
His story proves that rock bottom can become foundation. That rejection can build muscle. That chaos can become art. That even the most broken vessels can channel something beautiful.
"When you have a strong why, like I have a wife and son, and my history with all the crazy stuff I've been through, I just have something to prove. I'm gonna take this thing to the highest level possible. Share my story with the world, make the dopest art I can make, and leave a mark on Earth."
The mark is already visible. In every glitched frame, every pixel sorted perfectly out of place, every piece that shouldn't work but does. MaNiC is still here. Still creating. Still rising.
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*Find MaNiC's work on SuperRare and Twitter (@MaNiCArt_). For future Weekly Dose of ART features, he suggests @Scamart_0v0, @kingxerox5, and @lphaCentauriKid.