Writing Between the Fighting

16" x 20", oil on wood panel, 2014, private collection

Composed from several images form an old documentary on World War One, this scene of soldiers taking a few precious moments for correspondence with their families at home was important for me to show that it wasn't all killing and mayhem. Many specific details had to be left out for security reasons, of course, but even when it came to general matter-of-fact details of war, one soldier put it this way:

"Your very existence was different to anything you'd experienced before. You could speak to your comrades, they understood...the civilians? It was just a waste of time."

This is the painting I was working on during my on-site painting at the Mariners Park Museum in Prince Edward County.

This painting has a companion piece in the War at Home section called The Tyranny of Distance.

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