faq

1. How did you become a war artist?
2. How did you feel about being a war artist?
3. Did you see action while you were over there?
4. How long does it take to produce a painting?
5. What method of painting do you use?
6. Why do you paint with Alkyd/Oils?

 

 

 

 

1. How did you become a war artist?

Honestly, I still don’t know fully. The government representative in this case was the curator of the Canadian War Museum, Ms. Ricki Cameron. First, I was asked on the telephone if selected to act as Canada’s war artist in the Gulf “Would you go?” I replied Yes not really thinking I would later be chosen. Well about two weeks later the curator called me back to say that the group had been narrowed down to eleven artists and I was still in there. This surprised me, this could get serious. In the third week I was informed that it was to be me and would I come to Ottawa to sign contracts plus report to the base at Kingston for a medical examination, various needles and find a uniform.

2. How did you feel about being a war artist?

I must confess that I did have serious doubts about going, my memories of being under fire in the trenches of Korea came back to me and this gave me reason to reconsider this “Honour”. Strange, but a sense of ease came over as I quickly realized that I was not going as a combatant but as an artist and the imagined security of being an observer gave me a wonderfully false air of safety. Once in the theatre of course reality set in but all went very well for me.

3. Did you see action while you were over there?

Doing 120 drawings and seven paintings kept me very busy. The oil soaked rain from the Kuwait oil field fires was terrible. We Canadians were primarily responsible for ground defense at Qatar Air Base, constant navel patrol in the gulf proper and of course our air force was very busy as bomber escort, ground support and long range transport, our medical people, especially those of the 1st Canadian Field Hospital at Al Qashmah. Specialized signal personnel doing weird and wonderful duties along the full lines of communication. I did experience eleven scud attacks and one of those is immortalized in T.O.P.P. High.

4. How long does it take to produce a painting?

To answer this would require your appreciation that no two images are the same, a small or medium size landscape if done on location “pleinaire” is of course completed in one sitting or about 3 to 4 hours. A complex composition, made up from various drawings and brought together to better portray the subject could take years. The same is true of my military work. A painting reflects a lifetime of study and so I usually answer that “I started this when I was twelve.”

5. What method of painting do you use?

My favoured painting practice is to confirm my composition with a number of exploratory sketches. Once determined, I then transfer the drawing to my canvas, either through direct brush delination of the main features (usual for landscape). If the subject is complex, perhaps with a number of human figures and important structures, I will often “Grid” the work, that is I’ll draw equally spaced lines across and down the drawing and repeat these squares on the canvas then draw in these squares as dictated by the original.

Often, again depending on the complexity of my subject, I will underpaint in monochrome (grisaille), usually a brownish hue and paint in to determine my lights and darks, actually the values correcting where necessary. This is allowed to dry and I then paint over using transparent colour or more specifically I glaze and apply heavier paint in the lighter areas. This of course takes time, I may glaze with 6 to 8 applications to acquire an optical quality I’m after.

6. Why do you paint with Alkyd/Oils?

There are a number of reasons that the Alkyd paint works for me. First, I enjoy the fact that what I paint today will be dry tomorrow. As a young art student I was educated in the workings of oil paints, this is my continued choice of medium. Alkyds are brushed and mixed as oils and may be intermixed. Their physical properties are very similar. In almost all of my work I employ use of the glazing technique, the 24 hour drying of alkyds supports this drying requirement beautifully. With ordinary oils the drying time is much longer, cadmiums take weeks and earths take at least 3 days. Other important characteristics of alkyds are the degree of transparency, its non-yellowing over time, little or no cracking and finally the alkyd vehicle is more optically clear than linseed oil. Artists look on the alkyds as an update on oils.