'It is hard work to be a living entity'
Oil and work on canvas
2021
This has probably been the longest-in-production painting of mine ever. It's been on the easel for years. And although I don't think of it as one of my best, I am really quite ok with it, after years of trying to clarify it.
And I have realised it is a very similar theme to a painting I did three decades ago when I was 24, 'Happy Worker'.
Both images express a kind of hapless, ignorant happiness with a task, despite the task being either brutal, or as in this work, self defeating.
A long time ago, I watched my then girlfriend jumping up and down with excitement, talking to a friend of hers. I looked down, and saw she was unknowingly crushing hundreds of ants as she so happily jumped. That moment has never left me, and probably never will.
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