War Art
Karen Bailey
Karen Bailey is passionate about drawing attention to the uncelebrated workers in countless jobs across this land. When she was chosen in 2007 as part of the Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP) she carried her vision into the hospital at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.
March 8, 2010, by Jennifer Morse
Robert Semeniuk
In an issue that focuses on Canadian youth and explores our role in teaching and encouraging them to understand military history and remembrance, it is important to acknowledge that in some countries, veterans include the very young. Those kids carry the burden of war both as victim and perpetrator, and Canadian photographer Robert Semeniuk has witnessed that cost first-hand. His powerful images rank with some of the most affecting war art of our time. There is an odd similarity in the faces of his young subjects; a stillness, and that want of emotion, combined with such gritty subject matter, is [...]
September 20, 2009, by Jennifer Morse
From Fields Of Red – Canada’s War Art
The Flanders poppy has been the most recognized symbol of remembrance for the last 90 years, and so one would expect to find the scarlet flower proliferating in the over 13,000 artworks in the collection of the Canadian War Museum. Instead, images of the poppy are surprisingly rare.
Perhaps Canadian artists were not present when the poppies bloomed like blood on the battlefields after the First and Second World Wars, or perhaps the flower’s significance was not broadly understood until the wars ended. But if you look, you will find it flowering in a dozen works or so, and in a [...]
July 14, 2009, by Jennifer Morse
Will Ogilvie
Canada has sent thousands of soldiers and a number of artists to war, and both roles have remained distinct and perhaps opposite in nature. Soldiers are trained, as best as they can be, for the grim environment of war, but the artist is in alien territory trying to record his surroundings with sensitivity and nuance—a setting he has little training for. The two vocations are disconnected, yet Will Ogilvie excelled at both. He endured years of wartime service on battlefields and simultaneously produced watercolours that stand among the best in this country.
Born at Stutterheim, South Africa, in March 1901, Ogilvie [...]
May 14, 2009, by Jennifer Morse
Tom Bjarnason
Born in 1925 at Winnipeg, Tom Bjarnason was the last of eight children. His love affair with airplanes began the moment he got close enough to touch one. He remembers being six or seven years old—walking for hours to get to Stevenson Field, now the location of Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport. “I could see these airplanes…sitting right there, and I was touching the fabric. It was a thrill I never, ever got over.”
For years Bjarnason had dreamed of becoming a pilot, but a vision problem in his right eye ensured his dream would never come to pass. He [...]
November 27, 2008, by Jennifer Morse
John W. Beatty
John Beatty had a boisterous start in life. Born in Toronto in 1869, he was expelled from school at age 13 and by 16, itching for adventure, was enlisted and served as a bugle boy in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. Following the surrender of Louis Riel, Beatty returned home and worked at an assortment of jobs until he was 18, at which time—against his parents’ wishes—he joined the Toronto Fire Department. It was a good fit for the lively, outspoken young man. Indeed, up until the time of his death in 1941, he was known as the fireman turned [...]
September 20, 2008, by Jennifer Morse
T.R. MacDonald
We were given a jeep and a driver and left to do something called war art…. We received our supplies of paint, brushes and things in London before we went over; I took oil and a paintbox and a lot of watercolours.” This was T.R. MacDonald describing his first days as an official war artist in northern Italy during the Second World War. And although the subject of war art was relatively new to him in 1944, by the time he enlisted—in March 1941—MacDonald was a seasoned artist.
Born in Montreal in 1908, the artist studied figurative painting and thrived in [...]
August 25, 2008, by Jennifer Morse
William MacDonnell
The bleak quietness of William MacDonnell’s canvases is strangely threatening, and this is quite deliberate. The scenic painting titled Tragedy On A Country Road marks a place where Canadian soldiers, while driving, hit a landmine in the former Yugoslavia. Even though the viewer cannot help but pick up on the threat, it is obscure and hidden much like the landmines our soldiers often encounter while overseas.
At first glance, MacDonnell’s work is idyllic, with no signs of violence. What appears as a quiet winter landscape in the artwork titled In A Forest Near Smolensk is in fact the same place in [...]
May 1, 2008, by Jennifer Morse
Christopher R.W. Nevinson
Christopher R.W. Nevinson, one of the earliest war artists, created images of World War I that explored the personal and global consequences of war. While one early painting was censored for its unflinching portrayal of death, others portrayed close-ups of wounded and worn soldiers; still others were distant landscapes that spoke to the industrial growth of the period and how that changed the face of war.
The artist was born in 1889 in London, England. His parents were well-known journalists—his father an author and war correspondent, his mother a writer and suffragette. Unlike many of his peers, Nevinson’s family supported his [...]
March 13, 2008, by Jennifer Morse
Johnnene Maddison
Johnnene Maddison wanted to find a way to recognize the contribution of Canadian women on the home front during World War II, and what better way than in quilting, sewing and embroidery– stereotypically a woman’s craft. Her choice of medium lends both truth and [...]
