Shortly before I left for Italy, on 3 July, a shared a few ideas in anticipation of the trip. Looking back over the three weeks since then I am surprised by how much has changed in my expectations about the project. I had already sketched a few images, and begun work on one group. I realise now that some of those earlier ideas fall under suspicion, and perhaps I want to go in a rather different direction now.
One of the worst things I could do is to set out to present myself as some kind of “war artist”, along the lines of Orpen, Nevinson, Spencer or Nash, only with new material. The most important thing about their work is that it represented their own, personal experience. If I were to set out to try to imagine what it might have been like to be in the trenches on top of Pal Piccolo or the Freikopfel what I produced would be thoroughly false. I have travelled in the area, however, and the encounter with the effects of and legacy of war has been a genuine experience. It is my own experience of that which must frame what I do.
Of course, a difficulty arises because imagination is a kind of experience. Sometimes the world of the imagination is more real to us than things that might have a more obvious claim to be called “experiences”. It is a hard boundary to police; but I can see that it is going to be among the most demanding aspects of the project. Let’s see howe it goes.