I am an Artist that paints in a realism style, I paint hyperrealism portraits but above all I try to paint raw emotion.
Emotion on a canvas has to be a direct line from my heart to the artwork and it is this rage about the war in Yemen that made me determined to paint an artwork focusing on the plight of the children in The Yemen.
I remember reading the following headline: “The war in The Yemen has seen as of 2021 18,400 civilians killed and remains the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. In 2021 over two thirds of the population of The Yemen requires food assistance” Human Rights Watch 2021. At the same time I saw an old Time Magazine cover showing a US soldier in Iraq with the headline “What Will It Take To Win”. I immediately thought of the real victims of war, the civilians and in particular the children. I thought of the brave children of the Yemen who have lived through this relentless war since 2014. The question “What will it take to win?” hit me hard. Is anything worth winning if such slaughter occurs in reaching that finishing line?
I wish I could change the world, stop the cruelty and slaughter. The only way that I can make a change, the only way that I can express myself is through art.
I started this painting priming the canvas red. I had four things that I knew had to be in this artwork. Firstly a young girl from the Yemen, exhausted and traumatised clutching something good, something soft amongst all the spikes of war. I wanted to paint an unexploded bomb just about to go off as a dollar flies by which tells us the real reason for these wars. In the corner is a thistle, a beautiful flower, strong, robust and resilient. The thistle is the child of war.
I hope that when you look at this artwork you see a battleground of emotion and a painting that will ask you a different question every time that you look at it.
“The Dollar, Thistle and Bomb” was part of the acclaimed and important exhibition “A Canvas Of Courage” which was organised by Artvocate and Amnesty International in London in 2023.
