"Dubrovnik"

anti-war painting, ink, gouache & Caran d'Ache

When Marshal Tito, the legendary communist leader of Yugoslavia, died, a Yugoslavian friend told me of her fears for her country. At the time I was ignorant of Balkan politics and could not believe her dire predictions.

It was not until I had travelled over some years through eastern Mediterranean lands that I began to understand something of the ancient and deep-seated ethnic emnities that festered below the surface.

Even then, the horrors of the brutal conflicts, when they finally erupted at the end of the 1980s, came as a shock. War is always a terrible business, but that such attrocities could still occur in Europe had seemed unimaginable. Hundreds of thousands of people are still living with the consequences.

The siege of the city of Dubrovnik was especially tragic. I was reminded of the Hieronymus Bosch's visions of hell. Among burning ruins, fantastic creatures dressed as hunters and warriors hunt down lost souls to shoot, maim and torture. One such had the head of a spoonbill and carried a bow. In this picture his modern decendant stares out at us from a nightmare of tanks, burning bridges and falling angels. Has he come for our souls too, or his look one of accusation?