People act based on the trust they have in the voice in their head.  People addicted to something, and maybe even to addiction.  People appeal to the authority of their own experience but require everyone else to have paid their dues to a professional association.  People are definitely not the same everywhere and you tell this just by looking at them, or talking to them, or listening to them. …

As the United Nations prepares to pontificate on how democracies defend themselves, it might be useful to remember that across the United Nations’ 193 member states, a substantial proportion are not democratic. According to the 2025 V-Dem report, about 90 states qualify as autocracies, either “electoral autocracies” or “closed autocracies.” Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2025 survey…

we are not lost but forests now are very deep and further in we go to seek a safer place to stop and sleep the darker and more dangerous the discourse of our troubles is. Be silent, hide behind a tree or underneath a rock, or flee— but how, or where? The word that breaks your heart, shatters the will, cannot be silenced now. Walk on as far as you can walk. There’s a clearing somewhere…

Shout (pencil and sanguine charcoal, 20230818) Stephen J. Williams

Study of Mr Cox’s Arcadian giant (I) (watercolor, 20230622) Stephen J. Williams Study of Mr Cox’s Arcadian giant (II) (watercolor, 20230622) Stephen J. Williams Study of Mr Cox’s Arcadian giant (III) (watercolor, 20230622) Stephen J. Williams

Mr Cox (2b pencil, 20230618) Stephen J. Williams

Tie (pencils, 20230610) Stephen J. Williams

Aid to the pitiless recollection of my ageing self (pencil and watercolor, 20230609) Stephen J. Williams

Boy in St Kilda (watercolor, 20230607) Stephen J. Williams

Hieratic Walker (pencils, 20230605) Stephen J. Williams

Speech act (watercolor, 20230126) Stephen J. Williams

All quiet (watercolor, 20230125) Stephen J. Williams

Warhol in Paris (digital collage)

Warhol in Paris (digital collage, 20221126) Stephen J. Williams

Remember to practise your thought-terminating mantras #digitalcollage

Remember to practise your thought-terminating mantras (digital collage, 20221023) Stephen J. Williams