This Silent Countryside

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

Taken out of context, apart from the main body of work that makes up To the Sound of Trumpets, my World War One-inspired painting project, this is simply a nice winter landscape –a silent countryside, as the title would have it. And that's all you'd get unless you saw the exhibition in the church museum at Macaulay Heritage Park from November 11–30 this year (or read this here blog post) and read the accompanying quote from an onlooker in Europe in winter 1917:

"There was something suggestive of tragic drama in this silent countryside where millions of men were waiting to kill each other."

My intent was that if you now look at the painting again you'll see it differently, maybe with a sense of foreboding, doom, or even tragic drama.

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