Untitled

Acrylic & mixed media on wood panel.

30x30"

This is my recent painting. I titled it NO WINNERS because wars repeat the same pattern: governments and millitaries talk about strategy, victory, and power, while ordinary people are left with the aftermath — dead children, destroyed families, trauma, and communities that never fully recover. The people who pay the highest price are almost always civilians, especially women and children. To me, this is not victory.

My painting was inspired by the February 28th US bombing of a school in Iran, where more than 160 people were killed, many of them young girls. When I read about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how quickly these events disappeared from public attention. Plus there was no real acknowledgment equal to the scale of the loss. No lasting outrage. Just another tragedy absorbed into the endless news cycle of war and politics.

I wanted to make a painting that focused on the human cost instead of the political arguments.

At the top of the piece are the words GAME OVER painted in a retro pixel style, referencing old arcade games I used to play. Mounted to the bottom of the wood panel is an actual 1970s joystick. The joystick is important because it creates an uncomfortable connection between gaming and modern warfare. So much of war today is experienced through screens, technology, strategy maps, drone footage, and statistics that it can start to feel detached from real human suffering. Decisions made far away still end in destroyed schools and grieving families.

The foreground shows three Iranian girls standing together at the dock, facing an approaching oil tanker. On the tanker are the numbers “02 28,” marking the date of the bombing. I painted the girls holding hands to represent solidarity in the face of something much larger and more powerful than themselves.

The tanker itself has a second meaning in the painting. The scene references the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategically important oil shipping routes in the world. That region holds enormous influence over global supply chains, fuel prices, inflation, and geopolitical conflict. Oil is deeply connected to many of the tensions and wars that continue to shape the region.

For me, the painting is also asking a larger question: how long can the world continue organizing itself around fossil fuels, resource control, and endless geopolitical conflict before we reach a breaking point? Climate change, instability, war, inflation, and human displacement are all connected in ways we often refuse to fully confront.

Art cannot undo violence or bring people back. But I think art can slow people down long enough to reflect on what gets normalized. News cycles move faster than ever. Images disappear in micro posts on social media. And people become invisible statistics. This painting allows me to resist that erasure in some small way.

The title NO WINNERS reflects the core idea behind the piece. In war, even when one side claims victory, the human cost remains. Children die. Families suffer. Trauma continues long after headlines fade. At some point humanity has to ask whether repeating these cycles over and over is leading us toward progress — or toward our own version of “game over.”