Geoffrey Stapleton

In another case of life imitating art, not long after I started this painting my nephew, Jimmy Gardiner, had a car crash on the highway out in the middle of nowhere. The Australian outback is not a friendly place to be if you’re alone and unprepared and he was fortunate to have survived it virtually unscathed, managing to get a ride into the nearest town fairly promptly, but it shook him up. He said it happened so quickly but in slow motion and then the stillness.