My first try at speedpainting, compelled by my emotions after the Boxing Day Tsunami in South East Asia. It depicts souls rising from the crests of the waves, my own thoughts on the afterlife coming through strongly here. The passage below is my thoughts on how the disaster made me feel, and was posted with the piece on other online galleries.
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You know, I'm not that fond of human beings as a race, we're fundamentally destructive creatures with an overblown notion that everything should bend to our will. But watching news coverage of the natural disaster in Asia leaves me full of sorrow and a theoretical empathy for all those people who have lost their loved ones, their families, their homes, their whole lives. All in a few brutal hours at the awesome hand of mother nature... I cannot even begin to comprehend what that must be like, to find your husband or wife, or your children missing or drowned in their beds, all your worldly belongings gone in a few seconds. And yet I see amazing footage of people risking their lives to save others, people giving everything they have to help those who have nothing. It gives me hope that one day the human race as a whole will realise what a blessing they have in this planet, and indeed, each other.

But my thoughts tonight are with all those thousands who lie in unmarked graves, with those who grieve for them, and with those who still do not know, and perhaps never will. It makes me truly thankful for all that I have.
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December 2004, Painter 8, wacom tablet, and quite astonishingly for me, about 3-4 hours work.