Launched in 2002, my SEARCH series is a two-decade exploration in which digital search results become the raw material for textured, mixed-media paintings. It began with a simple idea: enter a single word, “human,” “hero,” “god,” and let the ranked images, shaped by millions of small human clicks, guide the canvas. The images that rise to the top aren’t chosen by anyone. They’re unintentionally voted on, surfaced by an algorithm that only counts, and buried inside them are unwitting conversations about meaning and truth. Back then the results were raw and accidentally honest. The seams are harder to find now, with results more organized, curated, and monetized, so the search has grown more intentional, even as the findings stay just as revealing.

I filter these digital snapshots through a human hand. I print them, reassemble them, and bury them in coffee, spray paint, wheat paste, and time until they look decades old. There’s an irony I keep returning to: the more I degrade these weightless digital findings, the more authentic they become. A search result has no age and no body, so by giving it one, I make a fleeting thing real. The work draws on Basquiat’s raw energy, David Carson’s RayGun-era typography, and my own roots hand-painting billboards and designing for the screen.

Digital Sketches from 2005, 2007, 2014, 2017 & 2025