“Economics” is available as a signed limited edition print, please see the homeless series on the limited edition print section of the website.
“Economics” is a painting centred on a homeless guy that I met in Amsterdam in 2019. I had seen Ronald a number of times during an exhibition that I had in Amsterdam. The last time that I saw him was early one morning when the streets were empty and quiet and he lay in a door way asleep. At that point there seemed to be no-one else in Amsterdam, just Ronald and myself. The silence was deafening.
I wanted to paint Ronald and I wanted to combine the painting with the contradictions that I saw in Amsterdam as well as the contradictions that I see everywhere else where the economy encourages the relentless pursuit for money whilst those who don’t quite fit in this model are spat out and forgotten. The rich are getting richer whilst the number of people homeless increases relentlessly. Something must not be working. We see the symbols of capitalism such as the brands of major corporations, we see the pile of dollars and the joke that this economic system plays whilst the other side of the painting shows Ronald exhausted, asleep, cold and hungry. We see a cardboard sign declaring the madness of the fact that “A Homeless man Sleeps on the streets in 2020”. A hand of a child reaches out through the letterbox representing the 33 percent of children in this world who live in poverty. In the corner is the crow the symbol of despair, of gloom.
Yet I want the painting to encourage. I can see the change beginning to happen, I can feel empathy everywhere and those in power who tried to suppress it are seeing their system crumble.