People desire to change their circumstance, but refuse to change themselves, therefore they remain bound.

This painting called “The Allegory of Complacency”, which I later re-created as a mural (video link below), is inspired by a 2500 year old poem by the Greek philosopher Plato - “The Allegory of the Cave”. It consisted of a group of slaves that sat on a log in a cave with a blazing fire behind them. Their captors made hand signals in the light of the fire cast onto the wall in front of these slaves who believed that the shadows on the wall was their reality. One day while the captors were away one of the slaves stood up and unchained himself and saw that there was a light at the end of the cave and so he went to it and poked his head out and saw there was this entire world outside full of light and life, freedom and air. He quickly ran back to his brethren slaves and told them what he had seen. But out of fear they shook their heads and were complacent and told him to sit down before he got them in trouble.

Watch the stop-motion process of my mural "Allegory of Complacency" here: