Gift-bearers

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This painting began with a stone relief of the past found in the ruins of Persepolis. It is exotic, grand, set in cold blue rock, very ancient, very wise, with shades of various intensities. But, as this static picture emerged, I felt an urge to challenge this depiction. Right in the centre, instead of the ordinary piece of pottery, I brushed in the brightest, hottest, most dynamic pot I could imagine, and moreover, I made it modern.
I finished the painting, looked back, and saw: my past, the human past, as a huge fixed cold tablet of stone - ancient, traditional and containing sublime beauty. Then, in the hands of the past, at the heart of the painting, lies the present: luminous, powerful, moving, modern, alive. Here, the present is a tiny point in the centre of every human being’s life, and so is the present in my painting. And then I realised: these ancient men were “gift-bearers” to the court of Darius the King. And another word for “gift” is “present”.
Therefore, these old men, now dead, are actually “bearers of the present” - that is why I call them present-bearers, or gift-bearers.