This painting evolved after constantly seeing starving women and children, mainly from Africa, India and Bangladesh, over the past two decades.
Famines linked to civil war are mainly the cause. People become refugees, making ordinary people abandon their homes and the crops on which they depend for their futures.
The Western nations have the capacity to feed the world ten fold,
but there is no profit in sending food aid into war torn areas.
These displaced people are also deeply religious, they look
to their gods and deities for guidance.
To this end, I have also incorporated the plight of the early Christian movement, from the 1st. to the 3rd.century A.D. Once found to be a follower, you were tried and usually sentenced to death. The Christians took their faith underground and developed a system using symbols, these they used to communicate rather like the secret societies of today.
These symbols were most efficient and saved many from being captured. Symbols such as the Anchor, Cross Keys, Alpha-Omega, Inverted Crosses, The Net, Crowns of Thorns, spherical objects, various designs on cloth, flags etc.
The parallel to both the above scenarios is simply that fear, ignorance and intolerance are still deeply embedded in our societies.