Since I was three, I was always going to be an artist. Nothing else,” says American artist Wayne White over email one August evening. “I saw people’s faces when they looked at my drawings. I knew I was one.”

You will probably have seen White’s brash, trippy word paintings. They often pop up on the internet via various Tumblr sites, pinned as inspiration or tweeted as ready-made memes. This ongoing series of paintings that contain words emblazoned across non-specific landscapes has been chugging along for an impressive 20 years now, with White starting it in 1999 as just “an experiment”. These artworks have become a defining part of White’s career but he has had significant success as an illustrator, set designer and art director among many other things.