kissing the hands

during the Irak war of year 2003, an internet site started to make a count of civil people dead. at the bottom of this page yo have a counter. when I started this project the number of civil dead people was about 1000. but what moved me to start drawing was a notice read in a newspaper, during the war: a cruise missile hits on a market full of people; besides the text, in a photograph, a child sitting besides a cheap wood box with his brother dead inside.
with this series of drawings I want to give a face to these persons, only a symbol to all the other dead people not included in that count, who die every day because of wars, injustice, intolerance. a symbol to the ones with their bodies, families, lifes, hopes, wounded.
the death is faster than me drawing. I will always be delayed in my series of portraits, but don´t want to stop this.
I remember some photographs of this war where two dead bodies (three in the case of childs) was buried in the same coffin, because lack of them. I put my portraits in pairs, as a remembering of that and to keep them not alone.

thanks for your visit. José Mesa, Tenerife.