A Return to the Cave: Art at the Edge of the Machine

Somewhere deep inside me, I think I’ve always known: we’re headed back to the cave.

Not in some post-apocalyptic sense, but in a symbolic one. A return—not to the past, but to the origin. The place where meaning-making began.

Tens of thousands of years ago, someone placed their hand on a wall and blew pigment around it. That wasn’t branding. It wasn’t product design. It wasn’t generative. It was a pulse. A declaration. I was here. I felt. I mattered.

And here we are—amid the rise of artificial intelligence, machine-generated images, predictive text, synthetic voices—and somehow, the impulse still burns: I want to make something that feels real.

AI is the Fire. We Are the Hand.

There’s something primal about AI. It's this swirling mirror of us—training on our language, our images, our biases, our beauty. It’s fire in the middle of the cave: warm, bright, mesmerizing, and a little dangerous if you get too close. But fire doesn’t create. It illuminates.

The artist, the human, is still the one who places the hand on the wall. Who chooses the shape, the moment, the gesture. The artist says: this version, not that one. This risk, this feeling, this imperfection—that’s the thing that matters.

We are no longer asking, “Can AI make art?” That question feels stale. The better question is: How does the artist respond to AI? Not in fear. Not in rivalry. But with curiosity. With resistance. With tenderness. With touch.

Returning Doesn’t Mean Regressing

When I say we’re returning to the cave, I don’t mean we’re rejecting technology. I mean we’re reclaiming origin stories. We’re saying: before the machine, there was the mark. And after the machine? There’s still the mark.

I’ve started imagining a body of work that embodies this idea. Using my hand—literally. Making drawings that begin with the most ancient symbol of presence: the handprint. But then letting those marks evolve through dialogue with AI. Feeding them into MidJourney. Fragmenting, warping, remixing. Then returning to the paper, to charcoal, to graphite, to gouache. Drawing over, drawing through, drawing beyond the machine.

A conversation between bone and algorithm. Smudge and pixel. Breath and binary.

A New Kind of Expressionism

In my recent talk at Northwestern, I called it Post-Digital Expressionism. A reawakening of the gesture. Not in rebellion against AI, but as a response to it. A kind of rewilding of the creative spirit. Where the artist is no longer asking “What can the machine do?” but rather, “What can only I do?”

There’s something electric about that question.

Because AI is fast. But it doesn’t pause.

It’s perfect. But it doesn’t ache.

It’s generative. But it doesn’t grieve.

We do.

And that’s our gift.

What Comes Next

I don’t have all the answers yet. But I know where I want to go: into the cave. Not to hide—but to listen. To the walls. To the echoes. To the parts of myself I forgot in the noise.

I want to make work that pulses again. That feels like it was made by someone—not just for something.

AI will be part of it. So will my hands.

Maybe yours will be too.