The Tyranny of Distance

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

I knew when I painted Writing Between the Fighting that it would need a companion painting to go in my War at Home section of my WWI painting project. I constructed this scene from a few different elements including the young woman who was volunteering at Ameliasburgh Historical Museum and the main setting which is from a photo I took while painting at Rose House Museum.

The title powerfully conveys the heartbreak of being very far away from home and loved ones. I thought I was borrowing it from a line from Six Months in a Leaky Boat by Split Enz, but I discovered that they got the line from a book with that title by Geoffrey Blainey (the subject of the song being the same as the book).

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