Clipper Maid of the Seas, 1989, Oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm

The figures in Tim Eitel's paintings appear isolated, immersed in themselves, introverted, often in total opposition to their surroundings. They move through oddly sterile worlds as though encapsulated in an invisible bubble.

On December 21, 1988, a Boeing 747-100, registration N739PA, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was blown up as it flew over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Two hundred and seventy people from twenty-one countries died, including eleven people on the ground.

Eitel, only seventeen at the time, was on holiday with friends in Scotland and spending the night of December 21, 1988, at a bed & breakfast in Lockerbie. The scenes he lived through that fateful night left an indelible mark on his consciousness.