Painting the End of the World

I had been scrolling for about an hour before I noticed I had stopped feeling anything. A war, a flood, a collapse, an advert for trainers, a friend's wedding — all of it the same size on the same small screen, all of it sliding past at the same speed.

That flatness is what I wanted to paint. Not the catastrophe itself — we have enough images of catastrophe — but the posture we have learned to hold in front of it. A man on a beach, headphones in, a cold drink sweating in his hand, watching the horizon come apart and not moving an inch.

I worked in oil so the fireball could stay wet and alive for two weeks while the figure stayed perfectly, deliberately still. The whole painting is a contrast between a sky that is screaming and a man who cannot hear it.

People ask if it is a hopeful painting. I think it is — but only because to paint our numbness this plainly is, in itself, a refusal to be numb. The painting is awake even if the man is not.