“I didn’t leave The Beatles. The Beatles have left The Beatles, but no-one wants to be the one to say the party’s over.”
John Lennon

Taking partial inspiration and its title from the words of John Lennon, this work was painted at the end of Gollon's series of ten 'Stud Muffin' paintings in 2002. It demonstrates Gollon's increasing focus on landscape:

"The paintings are construed in a light-hearted manner with each picture presenting a “stud muffin” of different character, from the debonair seen in 'Stud Muffin I' to the gauche 'Stud Muffin III' and the jaded in 'The Party’s Over', which was the last work in the series. Despite the frivolous content of the paintings they are important examples of Gollon’s crystal ability to present clearly identifiable characters and common human traits, and reveal the artist’s developing use of haunting landscape. Each figure is set against a mysterious and sublimely beautiful landscape background that falls between the borders of the surreal and real. This is one of the first instances in the series paintings where the artist has concentrated on the landscape setting with equal intensity to his figurative subjects, and by referring to the same landscape in the different paintings also provides continuity from picture to picture. This practice of suggesting loose links between pictures based on recognisable landscape features reflects Gollon’s concept of his series works as a type of road trip in paint, inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan, in particular Desolation Row."
Art historian Tamsin Pickeral writing in her biography of Chris Gollon 'Humanity in Art', endorsed by Bill Bryson OBE (Hyde & Hughes, 2010) ISBN: 978-0-9563851-0-9.