Above is a commission I did when I first started my so called painting career. I hate commissions but in those days, needs must. I happen to love horses but being asked to do a portrait of them was a nightmare. So because what follows is a prediction of gloom, why not add a picture that I hated doing.
I have come to the conclusion that anybody born just before, during or just after the last war has as Dickens opened in his Tales Of Two Cities, ‘the best of times’. They are to be envied. And as that age group includes myself, I feel the need of a pat on the back for my own good fortune. Anyone of the above category would have been too young to fight in the war and if you happened to live in a rural area, then things really weren’t so bad. Rationing was bearable and living without things you haven’t ever know, like bananas, is just blissful ignorance and therefore relative happiness.
In my lifetime I have seen technology increase exponentially and the state of the planet worsen at the same rate. Since the end of the war, the human race has carried on being as nasty as possible to each other. Endless mini wars and conflicts have proved that. Religion has denied other religions and racial tension has increased to bursting point. In the Muslim religion Shias hate Sunnis and the Taliban and Isis hate everybody. Hindus are still killing Muslims and vice versa. And Catholics, Protestants and non conformists will always be at some kind of war whether it be real or emotional. And worldwide, Jews continue to be hated by nearly everyone. Irrational but true.
And now with the seemingly unstoppable climate deterioration, the southern hemisphere has decided that they would be much happier in the northern hemisphere and are on the march. The Siberian perma frost is melting in one part of Russia and fires rage in the Arctic area of that some country. Fires have become out of control in the western states of the US and and Australia and Brazil continues to deliberately burn down as much of the rain forest so they can to make way for more agriculture. And the jungles of southeast Asia are been eliminated to make way for palm oil trees. And, more worrying than anything, the ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate and sea levels are rising. More and more animal and plant species are becoming extinct. Even bees which we can not possibly do without, are in trouble. And now of course, viruses are beginning to attack us and will continue to do so, vaccines or no.
I feel really sorry for the next generations that will try to survive the next hundred years. We have left them a poison chalice which will probably be just too hard for them to deal with. If you remember I wrote a story several months ago about aliens giving up on our blue planet as a hopeless case. If they can still be bothered to watch what is happening now here on earth, then everything that they predicted, is surely coming true. If your are religious then get out your prayer mat or start going to church. Synagogue, Mandir or Mosque and if not, think seriously of buying a one way ticket to Mars. You’ll probably be safer there.
paulolearybennett 