This painting was first conceived four or five years ago. It was based on a street in Aleppo, Syria, but could have been about Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, or countless other places around the world. I tried starting this several times but found it very emotionally difficult to follow through. With the invasion of Ukraine, I felt that I had to persevere. To show humanity at its worst with the face of a greater, more balanced nature, looking directly out at us. Revealing our profound folly and destructive failure.