A man in a deck chair watches the end of the world through his headphones, drink in hand. The signature work of the Provocations series — a painting about the comfort of not looking.
I painted this after a week of scrolling — wars, floods, collapse, all of it sliding past between adverts. So I painted us. A man on a beach with a cold drink and his headphones in, perfectly comfortable, while the horizon detonates and lays a road of fire straight to his feet. He does not run. He does not even sit forward. The most frightening thing I can imagine is not the explosion; it is how calm we have learned to be in front of it. This is the painting I most want to outlive me.
Artist's note
Oil, worked wet-into-wet over two weeks so the fireball would feel like it was still moving. The figure's stillness is the whole point.
