This is without doubt my most challenging painting yet, I've never really struggled with a painting like I have with “Exodus,” I've worked on it late into the night, early morning, worried over it, changed it, but I couldn't leave it alone and I love it. I wanted to capture the rich beautiful colours they worn, the banyan tree growing out of the mountain side, the steam from the jungle the movement of the people and elephants, the baskets they would have used in those days for carrying their food clothes and whatever else they owned, the long thin ones used for fishing, the poor lady carrying heavy baskets hanging on a bamboo pole, day after day, mile after mile, until they reached safety. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen as a child of Thais having to move after wars with Burma, there would be a mass exodus of people fleeing war carrying whatever processions they could carry and elephants carrying the rich people who never walk anywhere, their servants walking along side carrying their processions and bamboo baskets, leaving behind what they couldn't take with them. People coming out of the mist of the jungle into the light.