I came across this painting of mine from a few years ago on another website and got to look at it through fresh eyes. The sentiment of it’s original concept still moves me today!
Acrylic on 36 x 36″ canvas. 
Adela Legarreta Rivas 1979.
Original image by Enrique Metinides.

The tragic scene in my painting was originally captured by photographer Metinides and is of Adela Legarreta Rivas, a Mexican journalist. Rivas had visited a beauty parlour where she had her hair and nails done in preparation for a press conference later that day. On her way to meet her sister she was hit and killed by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec in Mexico City. In the scene her perfectly manicured nails, expensive jewellery, makeup and hair look almost flawless was it not for a single line of blood running across her nose and face.
In painting this scene I explored my own ideas of death and often use circles seen in the background to represent reincarnation. We hang onto material things and ego to boost our self esteem then suddenly a scan or an x ray can change all of our preconceptions of life in a second. A quote I heard sums this up quite eloquently, ‘Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live!‘