Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City

‘Hunted Joy flies through the gate. Blind Blindness is left desolate. Cupidity the city’s fate. The hungry hounds insatiate, Stays fettered to a sightless mate.’ [Poem transcribed on the right of the canvas] This mystical personification of Joy being chased out of the city is metaphorical of humanity’s ignorance to the joys of enlightenment. Cupidity wears a shining crown and lustrous clothing, clutching at a pile of gleaming jewels. He looks down, away from Joy as she flies away, ignoring her presence, concerned only with earthly possessions. Blindness cannot see her pure glowing embodiment, blind both in sight and in thought. Shackled to each other, they are together in their earthbound ways, ‘blind’ to the joy that could be theirs.