Oils on canvas - 36" x 22"
TWO WORLDS
This is a personal work that worked well as a cover for an edition of DAW Books' The Year's Best Horror Stories.
During one of the Ethiopian famines, I came across a magazine photo of a desert filled with a multitude of crude burial mounds extending off to the horizon. I was profoundly struck by the implications of the image and it stayed in my mind awaiting expression.
Over a period of weeks, a theme for a painting developed while I worked on other projects. When the opportunity came for me to execute a cover for a horror anthology, I was able to do the painting I wanted to do and still have it be right for the publication.
It is called TWO WORLDS because it is about the separation between our comfortable lives in the West and the awful conditions in part of the Third World. It is about feeling powerless to effect any real change, an inability to get serious help to those who need it, and the unwilling and uncaring attitudes of many people in the upper echelons of our society.