Because we need miracles in this time of Putin madness.

• Annonciation, Chateaunoir, August 1998, oil on canvas, 150 X 150 cm

This painting came to me as if in a dream and I quickly put it down as a sketch but then liked it so much in this state that I left it as is. And for that, I am grateful for I have destroyed hundreds of paintings by trying to 'finish' them, making them 'better'.

In this time of Putin madness there is indeed a need for many miracles. Like most everyone else who is rational and somewhat Humanist, I am appalled that this is happening in Ukraine. But then, there are so many places around the globe where such irrational violence explodes that one can feel helpless. The war in Sudan still rages and refugees are the first victims. But there is also Aleppo destroyed a few years ago, and Myanmar, Chechnya, etc etc... It's all 12th century madness, and needless, all of it.

I will not bore you further with my own disgust except to say that I only wish the entire 'West' might have risen up to condemn the United States invasion of Iraq, just twenty years ago with the same vigor with which they have deplored the Russian invasion into the lives of the peaceful people of Ukraine. Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and so many other hardcore American imperialists never faced any consequences for what they did to Iraq. 

And so, this simple picture is about a miracle, an inhuman kind of miracle, because Humankind needs more than a human answer to this life.