This one took me longer than the others I've done recently. It was harder to figure out exactly how to get the idea across. For a while, I was playing around with drawing the same monument to 'The Science' but it was surrounded by a massive crowd of naked, masked zombies - all holding their brains aloft. But it wasn't clear enough and I worried that some would interpret it as people offering their intelligence to help fight the virus rather than abandoning it on the altar. I settled on this simpler composition. Although there is no title on the picture, I have called it 'The Sacrifice of Reason'. I wanted to show how willingliy people appear to have abandoned their capacity for rational thought, or almost any kind of thought, in submitting to this new pseudo-religious cult of 'The Science' (most of which is pseudoscience, superstition and guesswork). I also wanted to illustrate the lack of dignity. Dignity is something that these people have surrendered every bit as much as reason. So it was important that they were all grotesquely naked and ugly. Totally undignified. Hence the woman on the far right is soiling herself (also a reference to the fear which grips these people). The empty eyes, combined with the masked faces highlights the extent to which they have given up their souls, their personalities - they are expressionless automotons. But they aren't just victims. A subtle message (maybe too subtle) is seen in the fact that by removing their own brains from their open skulls, they have been left with blood on their hands. This behaviour is causing serious harm and death to thousands. The statue itsef was originally going to be golden, more like a representation of a deity. But I wanted it to be darker, and more evocative of Soviet era statues. The fact that it's a microscope suggests a few different things. It's out of reach for the people walking by - they are not permitted to look through it themselves. They must trust what has been observed by others. Neither are they interested in seeing for themselves. Also, it suggests the intense zooming in on this one particular alleged pathogen, to the exclusion of all other threats to life. It is a tool with which man has been able to play God. And now it has become a false idol for the credulous masses. I tried to make the landscape as bleak and sickly as possible. Not my usual instict at all. Everything needed to feel heavy and wretched. It's probably the most depressing and dark artwork I have ever done. But expresses exactly my thoughts about the situation we are in. And once it was finished, I felt a hell of a lot better.