The Naked Silo

20" x 16", oil on canvas, 2014 Trench songs feature in a few pieces in my World War One painting project , but they're most prominent in this one and in "Why Are We Here?" , having some of the words scratched into the paint. I could have found image reference of an actual soldier tangled in barbed wire for this, but I decided to look through my photos from my trip to Italy last March, knowing there I'd taken a shot or two of Michelangelo's  Pietà . My idea was to extract Jesus from Mary's embrace and string him up in barbed wire for my Remembrance section, emphasizing the theme of sacrifice. My sketch of the figure in my notebook looked wobbly and rough, but nice and alive and reminded me of Egon Schiele 's drawing style, so I then chose to emulate his style for the figure in the final piece.

20" x 20", oil on canvas, 2014 This one's from the "Remembrance" section of my World War One painting project, To the Sound of Trumpets . At first glance, appears to be a little on the sentimental side, something I promised not to do with these paintings, but I think the title of the piece and the lyrics scrawled on the helmet keep it from getting too weepy. Parts of trench songs are quoted in or will be accompanying several paintings in this project, but those lines on the helmet are the entirety of the song, expressing the nihilistic futility (or, at least, the bewildering existentialism) many soldiers felt during the war. Trench songs were shared at base camps, while marching, and on the front lines, serving to bond the soldiers and to help alleviate their stress and their fears. Click here to read some of the more well-known trench songs of WWI, and click here to hear some.