The newsboys’ strike of 1899 in New York didn’t secure the children’s demands because society protested child labour. It was because the sheer impact of the uprising was respect for what the children had achieved together with no help from adults. Showing a child respect may be as important as caring for their nourishment and education. Discipline without understanding is what fills prisons and makes the streets unsafe at night. Even a high achieving individual with a privileged background isn’t safe from personality disorders that arise from emotional neglect.

‘Les Miserables’ the musical encapsulated a revolution across socio-economic strata of society. But the makers wrote a special song for children with little Cosette called ‘Castle on a cloud’. Hence, the title of this series – dedicated to children unseen and unheard.

Child rights denied, affect us well into adulthood. Therefore child rights might be the most important of social endeavours for the next 100 years in human evolution. Healing what we now understand in psychology as the ‘inner child’ might be a good place to start. Because we never really grow up until we find the voice we lost the last time we felt invisible. Everyone has experienced pain as a child. Growing pains also extend to being unable to reconcile with the humane and inhumane flaws of our childhood caretakers. But not everybody has the opportunity to navigate through the trauma well into adulthood.

The world needs joy and joy lives inside all of us. With my artwork, I hope to bring delight to kids of all ages! Because though children respond most excitedly to my work. Adults are drawn in just as much with almost childlike wonder.