
The Veterans were the Casualties of the Vietnam War;
The Families were the Prisoners of it.
The Story Behind the Painting
As I got on with my postwar life and stumbled into an art career, thoughts of my 13 months as a Marine in South Vietnam were really never far away….and I was eventually inspired to weave a narrative on canvas about those times….not as a combat artist would, but uniquely, as perhaps, a photojournalist would.
“Vietnam Elegy” began on 23 November 2011 and was completed on 20 February 2014. The tools of this 43″ x 54″ creation have been paint, brush, collaged mementoes, renderings of artifacts and war relics (like me) in order to provide a general sense of the mood and the realities of the Vietnam War era, as well as to take a look at the attitude and events that typified the happenings back in “the world.” But the playing field that supports the imagery of this work is one of shuddering fireballs and humid, distant tropical tree lines…even tearing apart the canvas as a symbol of a polarized America in the Sixties. Each of the individual components of this visual travelogue, both the hand-painted elements and the paper-collaged items provide their own historical precedent to our time in the war zone…and they each have an individual story to tell.
“Vietnam Elegy” is being created in honor of the veterans and their families…and I pray that it might possess cathartic qualities that reinforce what the passage of time has done to bring peace to the past. The original painting has been officially donated.