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The news is a constant stream of atrocities and war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. There is no other war in history where so many criminal, murderous, reckless and senseless acts have been so well documented and immediately shared with the world. I often feel like we all have a front-row seat to the most terrifying events in our lives and yet are powerless to do anything to help. This message is a further reminder that we are all not powerless.

We can all work together to help. We can create artwork, attend rallies, write to politicians, donate our time or money, and some truly heroic individuals head straight for the war to take up arms or deliver humanitarian aid while risking their own life. I am not that brave, but we are doing everything we can here to help.

This week we delivered four car-loads of groceries, supplies, toys, medicine, and general aid to the refugee effort here in Varna, Bulgaria. There are two centres open now, partly due to the main sports complex requiring a scaled back operation as they resume their normal activities. We’ll continue bringing supplies, and we are incredibly grateful to all those that have donated for this effort.

This image took a few missteps but finally was completed today. The concept was to get blue and yellow fluorescing ink in the center of a gerbera daisy, which has a very similar resemblance to a small sunflower (and we have some novelty sunflower seeds on order for more images). The first attempt was using highlighter ink, but the blue ink did not fluoresce. The second attempt was using fluorescent tempera paint, but still the blue did not fluoresce. Today we visited a specialty art store and they had what I needed, though it felt odd walking around shining a UV flashlight on their product offerings. The daisy is illuminated with a Convoy S2 UV flashlight after carefully painting the center of the flower with the two colours. Yellow fluorescence tends to be a bit yellow-green, so this needed to be adjusted in editing to properly emulate the Ukrainian colours.

“Peace” talks may continue, but Putin has showcased his complete disregard for any agreements, treaties, humanitarian corridors, international law, and more. The longer this war continues, the more I realize that there really is no negotiating with the devil. NATO and other allied nations need to find a way to remove Putin from power without creating an existential threat for Russia, and threading such a needle is damn near impossible. I’m certain that the most brilliant military minds in the world are working on this, but here we still sit, watching in horror of the daily crimes against humanity. I fear we will become numb to this in time, but should not simply be complacent regarding our own safety or the lives of other human beings just like us. Please, write to your politicians about your thoughts. Tell them to take action, whether it be increasingly harsh sanctions or military involvement. We all must do more to stop this brutal genocide.