Like many of us who watch the news, I too have witnessed the terrible scenes of the people and children starving in war torn Gaza . What seems even worse to me, if worse is possible, is that the food and water to save them is just a short distance away, being withheld by those with guns, politicians, and inactive leaders. It would be easy with the world in turmoil, for us all to become desensitised to cruelty , but to become embittered or blind would in my view diminish all humanity, and I don’t believe this is the way to an enlightened world.

The attack on all the innocent young people and families murdered and taken hostage on 7 October 2023 was heinous . Yet now, in my head I hear the wise voice of my grandmother, who would say to me when I was small, “two wrongs don’t make a right” . She taught me that behaving no better than your enemy isn’t the answer you think it is, if you extinguish your own light exacting revenge .

We all grow up and learn from experience, that the human capacity for cruelty extends to all living things . So , like many, I read with outrage a few days ago, about the torture and cruelty normalised at Cranswick Farm . Apparently authorised by, and supplying pork meat to, many major supermarkets including Sainsbury, Tesco and Morrisons.

To me all tyrants seem to live a parasitic life , feeding off the approval of loyal followers who benefit in some way, at the expense and destruction of others integrity, lives and souls. Extraordinarily to a deluded tyrant, this legitimises what they are doing, and encourages them to continue .

As a painter, this world to me is amazing, beautiful, full of riches , and love . Everyday I feel lucky to still be here , even when times are challenging, and having lost many loved ones, both human and animal . But we all travel alongside the darkness that we can unexpectedly enter , if we are too trusting or distracted , when we blindly accept as truth, what is written or said. Declared in advertising, or by politicians and sometimes the people we think we know. You would think the with all the means of communication available to us that truth would be easier to find, but it seems the opposite is so .

So we must all be vigilant, and keep that light shining x.