In one sense it’s not all that “new”, in that I’ve been churning it in my head for nearly a year. I’ve poked at it; looked at it through my fingers; peeped at it when I thought it wasn’t looking; tried to glimpse it sideways on, remarking loudly that I’m doing something else entirely. I even prepared some canvasses, although they remained totally blank. I went as far as to apply for a grant to support it. (No joy there.) Aside from filing reference material, however, I can’t say that I actually did anything. Today I have drawn the outlines on three canvasses and applied patches of texture gel at strategic locations.
Can you see what it is yet? Actually, I can….at least, on the first two of the set.
Last summer I went on a walking holiday in the Italian part of the Julian Alps, with two friends. To our astonishment we discovered on top of a rocky ridge the debris of the First World War…trenches, dugouts, barbed wire, gun emplacements. It had been the front line between Italian and Austrian forces between 1915 and 1917. A small section of the front has now been turned into an outdoor museum. (It’s at Pal Piccolo. Check it out on the net.)
I found this both intriguing (in that I knew next to nothing about the Italian role in that war) and moving. It was not easy to imagine fighting a war under those conditions. Clearly the experience was a dramatic contrast to what we have become accustomed to imagining as “WWI”…principally that has to do with mud! I then read Mark Thompson’s book The White War, that filled in the background for me, and I did some further research. As a result of this I began to develop an idea for a series of paintings, constituting a personal response to the site, and what it meant.
Exactly how to approach it has not been an easy decision. I knew that it would be ridiculous, and dishonest, to try to present myself as some kind of “war artist”, and a direct witness to the events. It had to be an entirely personal response, in part growing out of my experience as a mountaineer in the region. The solution to that general problem is still with me. I have enough of a grip on a small number of images, however, to feel that I can make a start, albeit tentatively.
In July I will be going back to the area, accompanied for some of the time by the same companions who were with me the first time. I expect that things will develop and flourish in that period. In the meanwhile, however, I feel greatly relieved that I have managed to get things moving, so that it has really become a “project” and not just an idea. Watch this space for further news, and I hope before too long, some images.
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