«2025»

In 1999 The Matrix gave cinema its most copied image: green characters pouring down a black screen. Simon Whiteley, the designer behind that code, has said the falling code came from sushi recipes in a Japanese cookbook, with the characters flipped in a mirror. That borrowed rain is the starting point of this crypto art painting.

My version is made of money. Dollar signs, euros, bitcoin B's, Ethereum diamonds and Litecoin L's fall in pale mint and several greens, packed edge to edge on black. A golden question mark cuts through the middle, built from square pixel chunks that drip and glitch as they go down. At the bottom right a grinning tycoon in a black top hat and round dark glasses leans out of the dark. One of his arms reaches across to a pair of scales, a gold dollar sign in the left pan and a gold bitcoin in the right. The other arm turns into gold pixels.

Artists have been staring at money for decades. Warhol painted the dollar sign over and over in 1981, flat and cheerful, like a brand. In 2021 Beeple's digital collage Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold at Christie's for about 69 million dollars, and crypto and art ended up in the same sentence. I wanted to keep that conversation going with brushes and gold paint.

I put the question mark in the centre because I honestly do not know which pan will go down. I like that the scales weigh two kinds of faith, old paper against new code, and that the man holding them smiles either way. In this crypto art painting the title is only a year, left hanging like the question. As an original pop art painting it is loud, but the black ground keeps it calm enough for contemporary pop art at home, and it suits art for office walls too.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email.