At the moment when the world collapses, we don’t extinguish homes—we save people. And, of course, there are always those who save. In the foreground, there is one firefighter or rescuer who gives meaning to the story. He is alone with himself, looking at the sky; it's his individual experience, a moment or a second when, in the midst of a global catastrophe, he simply looks up.
We see and feel that he is the one who remains. Perhaps he is looking at something that is coming toward him. It doesn't necessarily have to be a comet or a falling planet like in Lars von Trier's *Melancholia*. Similarly, in a battlefield, a person watches enemy tanks coming down a hill or foreign planes with rockets approaching. The painting is about those who stay until the end, who have decided not to give up, and this decision arises from their ideals and values, which they have declared as the meaning of their lives. Most likely, even at the last moment, they wouldn't be among those rushing to escape on a spaceship. And at the moment they made that decision, they accepted that they were ready to die. In other words, this work is also about the important theme of choice. Because it is a choice—what do you do, how do you act in a crisis situation, do you stay, or do you leave?
Ivans Mazeins "This pure starlight"
2021