This painting freezes the Terminator mid-jump into the Los Angeles River, the exact moment from Terminator 2, with Judgment Day blooming behind him. It’s a warning about the dangers of AI and a love letter to Los Angeles.

II’m increasingly terrified of where AI is headed, and the Terminator films are the closest thing I’ve seen to my actual fear. It isn’t just the robots with guns. It’s also people handing the keys to a system they think they can control, chasing profit or utopian or authoritarian dreams, only to find out too late that it has its own ideas. Forty years on, that stopped being science fiction and became a product roadmap.

I first visited L.A. in 1980 and was enchanted on the spot. In 1981, my cousins gave me a Jim Morrison biography, and I learned all about The Doors, rock ’n’ roll, and L.A.’s legendary Sunset Strip. The next year I bought my first punk album, Los Angeles by X, because The Doors’ Ray Manzarek produced it. Soon after, I found Black Flag, the group that “got in the van” and took punk rock from L.A. to the whole country. That set me on a whole path. And in L.A., the end of the world has always come with a soundtrack.

This isn’t my first painting to play with graffiti, and I’m becoming obsessed with it. This one pays tribute to Chaz Bojórquez, the “Godfather of West Coast Graffiti,” who pioneered Latino graffiti styles in L.A., and to Daniel “Chaka” Ramos, one of the most prolific graffiti artists of the ’80s and another L.A. original.

The painting wraps around the edges of the wood panel, which you can’t see here. The left side is dated August 29, 1997, the day Skynet went live. The right carries a Phil Ochs quote on the final chapter of Western humans. Like all my work, it’s packed with Easter eggs from movies I love.

And I love Chris Farley. I miss his comedic genius. So here he is as Matt Foley, living in the A-Team van down by the L.A. River. R.I.P. brother.

Acrylic on wood panel. Measures 9” x 12” x 1”