Extinction

A toy can hold a whole universe in its hollow body. In Extinction, that universe is both vivid and doomed, as if childhood wonder has been drafted into service to carry the weight of the adult world. A strange creature — the last of its kind — stands on the right, half in water, half in garden, staring outward with the fixed expression of something that cannot understand why it is being watched. It is a toy, yes, but it is also a presence: vulnerable, singular, and already a relic.

Across the scene, a line of toy spacemen advances with that peculiar calm only toys can possess. Their clear bubble helmets catch the light like small moons. In their hands, they carry a mixture of instruments and guns — objects of inquiry and control, measurement and threat. Some hold devices that suggest surveying, sampling, or recording, while others grip weapons that turn the so-called expedition into something far more ominous. That detail shifts the story instantly. This is not simply exploration; it is extraction. It is not only curiosity; it is power.

The setting deepens the unease. A pristine suburban house sits in the middle distance: perfect lawn, tidy roofline, the quiet order of human comfort. Behind it rises a bank of cloud — thick, luminous, almost theatrical — like smoke made beautiful. Nature looms, but it is framed and contained. The sky is too perfect. The garden is too lush. Even the water reflects like glass. This is the kind of landscape we construct when we want to believe the world is stable, manageable, endlessly renewable.

But stability is an illusion, and the toys know it. The huge rocket on the left, painted in candy colours and stamped with bold lettering, is both celebration and warning. It promises escape, adventure, progress — all the bright ideas of the twentieth century — yet it also reads as a monument to human appetite. Rockets are made to leave, to conquer distance, to claim new ground. In the context of Extinction, it becomes a symbol of our restless urge to take more, to go further, without asking what gets left behind.

That is why the creature matters. It does not flee in motion; it flees by existing. It is cornered by the story itself. The painting echoes the question from the backstory: are the spacemen there to study or to destroy? The tragedy is that either answer can lead to the same end. To study can become to catalogue, to collect, to preserve, only after it is too late. To destroy can happen quietly, indirectly, through indifference, or through “progress” that does not pause to look behind itself.

Extinction rarely arrives as a single dramatic act. It happens by slow erosion — habitat reduced, water warmed, balance shifted — until “the last of its kind” becomes a sentence rather than a warning. The guns in the spacemen’s hands make that truth plain: this is a scene about domination, about the moment when knowledge and violence begin to resemble each other.

And yet, the painting’s power comes from its tenderness. These are toys: the rocket, the spacemen, the creature. They are the objects we once trusted to keep our fears small enough to hold. In Extinction, they are asked to do something harder — to remind us that wonder and loss are intertwined. The scene is beautiful, almost idyllic, and that beauty sharpens the grief. Because the world will still look lovely, even as it empties.

Extinction is a child’s story told with an adult’s knowledge. It asks us to decide what we are: curious visitors, careful guardians, or quiet destroyers. And it leaves us with the creature’s gaze — a toy’s stare that feels suddenly, painfully real.

The heroes and villains featured in my painting, Extinction, are Masuday Cragstan Horikawa’s 1950s Atomic Rocket, Marx’s 4-inch Spacemen, and The Creature Clockwork Robot (1991).

Extinction, Oil on Linen 95 cm x 180 cm