In a clandestine ceremony in New York, the Belfast-born artist dipped his pictures in red paint. It was all a meditation on the theme of lossOur instructions came via email. We were to meet at Barbuto, a trendy restaurant in New York’s West Village, at 7:45pm sharp. There we would be met by “a man in a brown fedora and a moustache” who would lead us to a desolate building nearby, where we would watch the Irish artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers destroy a piece of his work.