This is a new painting called “The Art of Stopping the World”. It is oil on canvas, 36X48 inches.  The title comes from a recent clash with, I’m not sure if you could call it a reading of, Carlos Castaneda’s mysterious “Journey to Ixtlan”. I have used my favourite backdrop Belfast City Centre, City Hall, and employed Queen Victoria to control time with a right royal sized pocket watch and hourglass (maybe that’s another story).

The painting talks about our innate ability as human beings to fill our lives with the other, anything rather than confronting ourselves, our reality, whatever that is.  The businessmen fatcats, totally consumed with their excessive getting and spending, are mutating into a two-headed hydra.  The student with his headphones is  immersed in the world of technology and the secretary finds her refuge in endless work.  Each life  dances to the tick of the clock, to the trickle of sand into the hourglass.

Many peoples lives are driven by their own personal demons.  Could you imagine life as an endless bus journey driven by a clearly demonic driver, forever pressing the bell but never able or maybe never really wanting to get off? (Ditto the black taxi).  Castaneda’s idea is that we stop our lives for just a moment, in a mindfulness way, to try to get a glimpse of our own reality.

I started this painting some time ago.  While I was working on it a pandemic, the Coronavirus, has stopped the world and all our lives.  I can only hope that something positive, no matter how small, will come out of  what can only be described as a nightmare and that we can emerge as a surely battered but better society.