BURN (36” x 48”- mixed media) The child was now in his second year of being a teenager; the time was 1979. He belonged to a First Aid Troupe – much like the American Boy Scouts – they trained one evening per week. And one night the young boy was thrust into the pits of hell – black smoke, gas pumps on fire, bodies everywhere. A nearby gas station was bombed, and the ambulance routes from the hospital were blocked off by British Army checkpoints. Members of the First Aid Troupe were called to the scene, as the closest “trained” first responders. An instructor held the boy back for safety, as a person engulfed in flames came rushing toward him. He could only stand and watch the person Burn. Once the ambulances arrived, the responders helped with the cleanup. The 14-year-old boy/child gently lifted the black and charred body; its head came off in his lap. Wrapped in the green, white and orange barbed wire of a political cause, there would be no way to identify this body—it was only one of thousands of nameless remains to be used as propaganda, bound forever to the struggle for freedom. |