The photograph above is of a painting that Didi finished in about 1983 or 1984 when she was 14 or 15 years old. The painting was undertaken using inks, Caran d'Ache crayons and water, and pen and ink. The painting itself is very large - too big to scan, hence the sadly rather poor quality photograph

From a young age, Didi was troubled by the way in which humanity was having increasingly negative effects upon the planet, largerly in her opinion caused by the greed of the so-called developed nations: The United States of America and Western Europe. It is this greed-driven destruction of our planet that this picture was intended to represent. The painting was exhibited at a local gallery for a while and won Didi an award.

There is an impressionist representation of the Earth in the bottom left corner of the painting being ripped apart by the ragged teeth of a JCB digger, exposing the mantle and some of the core inside. The contents of the "jaws" of the digger are meant to represent beauty and history - the hill that you can see with the strange horse-like drawing is meant to represent the Uffington White Horse in Wiltshire, UK - Didi was always fascinated by chalk drawings and the societies that were alleged to have carved them into the hillsides. This representation of something from ancient history is the the bit that represents history being discarded in man's plundering of the planet. The trees and plants are meant to represent the ecosystem - the river with blood running through it is also meant to represent destruction of ecosystem, but also pollution, in this case pollution by blood (intended to mean human blood) but also the blood on the hands of those that cause the destruction. The driver of the digger is in the form of the devil and there are, not clearly in evidence from this photo, various currency notes and different languages written on the side of the cabin. The sky includes various nationalities' flags. The reason for the jet-blackness (good old india ink) is to represent the void in which our planet exists, albeit with the Sun in evidence in the top-right.

It is important to note that at the time the painting was done when Didi was 14/15 years of age, she didn't know many flags, and she also didn't know different language character sets. Didi was always lazy about researching content - she'd just include anything that came into her head. So don't take any of the references to the countries that appear to be represented by these symbols completely literally, or be concerned about the ones that may have been excluded! These are all symbols that are simply meant to represent the idea of different nations being involved in the destruction of the Earth through greed and ignorance.

24 years ago it was that this painting was executed. At the time of writing (2008), it doesn't half seem even more relevant today.