Obverser (Endless War)

Description

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Obverser (Endless War). I painted this in regard to the contradictory nature of humans and our endless wars, often embarked upon in the name of “freedom and democracy”. It’s a bizarre state of affairs that we never wake up to this obvious lie, we believe what we are told to believe and fall in line accordingly with whatever’s in the national interest today.

Safe in the knowledge that we’re the good guys, somehow by some exceptional stroke of luck always on the side of righteousness. Always occupying the moral high ground. Must be a giant comfort to all the victims of war around the world that all those bullets and bombs that rain down without end come with good intentions and aren’t in any way about power and hegemony.

Technique 

This painting is one of the larger canvases I have painted, I started off prepping the canvas by splashing and flinging paint at it, in part to achieve the texture you see in the finished composition. Later I played around with the composition of the figure, I was aiming to get a figure that had the energy of a barstool politician (the alternative title for this picture would be Barstool Breakout) in full flow beating his war drum at the bar of his local pub (all in the name of peace of course).

Later I started to add the photos in the background, which was actually my son’s idea and finally added the newspaper collage before cleaning up the lines. Took about three weeks from conception to completion.

Photos included in the collage on Obverser (Endless War)  in the background from top to bottom are:

Hiroshima (Unknown photographer)

Napalm Girl (Photographer Nick Ut)

Raising a Flag over the Reichstag (photographer Yevgeny Khaldei)

Saigon Execution (photographer Eddie Adams)

Twin Towers 9/11 (Unkown photographer)

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (Photographer Joe Rosenthal)