It was the middle of a drought, the middle of summer and the end of an exhausting, dry year. I knew I had to paint something huge for the art fair, but I was so angry about the time and energy I had to waste due to the water shortage that really should have been handled by competent people instead of career-politicians whose skill base was jockeying for position, rather than anything useful to the people they supposedly led.

It was a time of frustration and I painted mostly out of that angry desperation, on the biggest canvas I had available in the studio. Because the problem was big, and I felt small. As under-resourced as the empty taps that only dripped instead of gushing.

The poem arrived in my head pretty soon after the main structure of the work was blocked in and became the painting’s artist statement for the exhibition. The necklace began as ordinary jewellery, then as I painted, morphed into the rain that we were all waiting for. The politicians morphed into new roles, but nothing changed — The art fair arrived. The rain did not.

But Will you be Ready when the Rain Does Fall?

The drought has been coming for a long time.
Time enough is never enough time
For good-time, short-term
Kings and queens
Of the Party.
(Whichever party)

Playing drunken musical chairs is scary
When the silence comes.
Silence except for tiny drops
on tin roofs
On show-off roads
In broken gutters
Then out to sea.
Undrunk.

Rain still falls but the Party never stops:
Someone will get caught in the silence,
In the gentle rain
That still falls
Sometimes.