11th November marked the 100th Anniversary of the first world war armistice and this event was acknowledged in many parts of the world and particularly in Europe. To mark the anniversary there have been many services, concerts and media tributes to those who died and acknowledgements of the horrors of the conflict captured either on film or in sound. One of the most creative works to have materialised in recent days was a film first shown on television and now released as a feature film.
Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old,” a magnificent cleaning up and realisation of old documentary film footage, has transformed black and white archive film into full colour to bring home the appalling conditions and needless slaughter that took place in the trenches in Northern France. Lip readers have also been employed to interpret what the soldiers on both sides were actually saying and there are also extracts of interviews with many of those who had taken part in the conflict talking about their thoughts, feelings and experiences. The appalling conditions and needless suffering of the troops is graphically portrayed and the entire work is a powerful weapon for advocating peaceful solutions to all human problems between nations and races. Here is the trailer for this epic film;-
Soon after watching this footage, I visited “Art in the Aftermath”, an exhibition at La Galleria, Pall Mall by rehabilitated service personnel who have transformed their broken lives by turning to art, poetry and film for rehabilitation purposes. The works here were created by former servicemen suffering from PSTD, physical problems or brain injury predominantly incurred in Afghanistan. These creative war veterans have found peace and purpose and hope to find economically viable careers from doing what they love having survived the violence, pain and suffering of conflict. Here is a self-portrait by Stewart Hill one of the artists in the exhibition.
The next and last exhibition on my ‘must see’ list had anti-war themes and racial equality running right through it and was a display of lyrics, drawings and paintings by Nobel prize -winning Bob Dylan entitled Mondo Scripto. Despite the media hype I was not disappointed by the show as it really did live up to expectations. For the exhibition, he had hand-written the lyrics for around 60 of his most famous songs and each was accompanied by one of his drawings. A few of his paintings were also there to be admired. I decided to attempt a quick sketch of Dylan as he is today and the result is shown below.
At the moment large-scale new work is not an option purely through lack of space! It has always been an ambition to have a studio which allows the creation of such paintings, but unfortunately life in in a relatively small house does not permit such luxuries.