Progress

The painting is now at that dangerous stage; so close to being finished, and so easily ruined beyond repair. Making matters more difficult I am starting to doubt the concept. Is it working? Can the two parts be made to relate to each other?

One option I have toyed with is introducing a single red poppy into the bottom right corner (where there is writing currently). The idea is to connect the red poppy with my daughter's red sunhat. But I don't want to 'over use' the poppy metaphor.

A second idea is to colour one of the small photos that have spilled onto the ground with some yellow - again linking to my daughter in the top panel. Will this be too subtle?

I still intend to write Thomas Paine's quote through the black strip. This should soften the otherwise harsh black line.

So many choices still to be made, so many potential disasters!

Progress so far

With only weeks to go before I need to ship the canvas to Cassino, the painting is coming together. I am happy with the top portion. Some will recognise the islands off Whangamata beach (detail shown above).

Hauturu or Clark Island is accessible by wading at low tide and is popular in summer months for rock-pool fossickers and kayakers. Whenuakura, sometimes known as Donut Island, sits about a kilometre east of the southern part of Whangamata beach (Otahu Beach). Tuatara roamed on Whenuakura until fairly recently. Whenuakura Island has a large collapsed blow hole which has formed a small beach inside the island - hence the alternative name.




The challenge ahead is ensuring the two parts of the painting work as a cohesive whole. I have a few ideas on how to connect them; you'll have to wait a few weeks for the next instalment .

that my child may have peace

'If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.'

'It is not only the living who are killed in war.'

These two quotes; the first is Thomas Paine, the second Isaac Asimov, together are the inspiration for the painting in progress.

It's hard to make it out at this early stage, but it is two images. The top part of the painting is Whangamata January 2010 with his granddaughter and great granddaughter.

The lower image is based on the photo of Mac and his tank crew taken in 1944 while they rested after 3 days trapped inside their tank during a German bombardment.


I'm almost certain that when Mac and other young men set off to the war they did not have Tom Paine's words motivating their actions. But I'm pretty sure that ten or twenty years later they would not have wanted their children and grandchildren to experience anything like what they did at Cassino.

The painting will measure roughly 120cm square. For the first time I am using unstretched canvas. It's a heavy Indian cotton, quadruple primed; three white, the last black.

I've been using a black primer for awhile now. It presents a challenge when it comes to marking out the composition, but I prefer the luminosity it gives to colour - or possibly that is just in my imagination. The challenge ahead is going to be not getting too detailed and maintaining a sense of energy.

Twist of fate | Cassino Exhibition May 2010

A rare opportunity
A rare opportunity has come my way. An invitation to take part in an exhibition of New Zealand artists in Cassino from 15 to 29 May 2010.

The theme is Peace and Remembrance.


What this means for me
The pressure is now on for me to come up with my first painting in this body of artwork.

If am unable to raise the money to attend the exhibition, and therefore freight the painting/s my guess is that I’ll need to have them completed mid-April.

There is nothing like a deadline to inspire action.

What I plan to do
There is no value in doing the artistic equivalent of sending ‘coals to Newcastle’. Italians will not go to an exhibition of New Zealand artists to see paintings of war graves and fallen buildings, surely? I want to send them something they may not have seen; New Zealand. But it needs to link to the purpose of the show.

Twist of fate, an unpredicted or random occurrence with far-reaching consequences

At this early juncture one idea is taking shape; two photographs, one sitting on top of the other. One is a creased and faded black and white photo of Mac and comrades resting amongst the rubble of Cassino in 1944. The other is a vivid colour photo of a family group on the beach at Whangamata taken January 2010. It’s a photo I took and it includes Mac’s widow, his daughter, two granddaughters and two great granddaughters.

The Battle of Cassino may not have been an unpredicted or a random occurrence, but on the ground, whether or not one person survived could come down to a twist of fate.

I cannot know what Mac experienced in Cassino in 1943/44. But I do know many people are grateful that he survived. If he hadn’t, that second photo and five of the people in it would not exist. One is my wife, another is my daughter. The same story will be true for incalculable numbers of people across the globe; it’s a universal story, 65 years passed and three new generations born.

Equally it’s important to consider the lives fate did not spare. War doesn’t just kill the people there and then, it destroys unnumbered futures. The consequences are far-reaching indeed.

The Battle of Cassino

The battle of Monte Cassino was one of the bloodiest engagements of World War II and it remains one of the most controversial.



An ancient Benedictine monastery overlooking the battleground was destroyed by bombers in February 1944.
But bad allied co-ordination before and after the attack allowed German forces to occupy the ruins.

In the photo above , New Zealand Troops fight hand-to-hand through the streets of the town.

The New York Times said the onslaught from bombers and artillery on 15 February 1944 was the worst ever directed at a single building.
But parts still remained standing.
The battle at Monte Cassino had begun a month earlier, as allied forces fought up through Italy.
It ended in May, with up to a quarter of a million dead or wounded.

The advance into Cassino was preceded by a massive aerial bombardment.
Hundreds of bombers dropped nearly 1,000 tons of high explosive - about five tons for every German soldier in the town.
But the resulting craters and piles of rubble hindered infantry movements, and blocked the path of allied tanks.

The monastery - what was left of it - was finally taken by Polish forces on 18 May.
A handful of wounded German soldiers were found sheltering in the crypt containing St Benedict's tomb.



Fragments of ancient frescoes and broken sculptures lay among unexploded shells and the bodies of dead soldiers.

The appalling conditions at Monte Cassino came as a shock even to hardened German troops transferred from the Eastern front.
Some German soldiers were poorly equipped and froze to death for lack of proper clothing.

The allied victory was achieved as much as anything by sheer weight of men and military hardware.

Today the monastery has been re-built.

It looks down over the new town of Cassino, the main road from Naples to Rome, and thousands of war graves.



In this cemetery lie Britons, New Zealanders, Canadians, Indians and Gurkhas.

Polish and German cemeteries lie not far away.







Acknowledgements to the bbc.co.uk for the information and photos used in this post

War and Pieces (of art)

One of the first articles I read about the Battle of Cassino discussed the complete destruction of the historic hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino, founded in AD 524 by Benedict of Nursia.

On 15 February 1944, the monastery, high on a peak overlooking the town of Cassino, was destroyed by 1,400 tons of bombs dropped by American bombers. The bombing was based on the fear that the abbey was being used as a lookout post for the German defenders. This position evolved over time to an admission that German soldiers were not garrisoned there but that the risk of the monastery becoming occupied justified the action.

As an artist I read this with horror. What frescoes, sculpture, paintings must have been destroyed?

Actually not as much as I imagined. Attached to this story of enormous carnage I found another of an unexpected nature.

In the Italian Autumn of 1943, two German officers, Captain Maximilian Becker, a surgeon in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel of the same unit, with singular prescience proposed the removal of Monte Cassino’s treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo before the war would come closer.



Image: German soldiers rescuing artworks from Monte Cassino

Both officers convinced church authorities and their own senior commanders to use the division’s trucks and fuel for the undertaking. They had to find the materials necessary for crates and boxes, identify skilled carpenters among their troops, recruit local laborers (to be paid with rations of food plus twenty cigarettes per day), and then manage the massive job of evacuation centered on the library and archive, a treasure literally without price. The Abbey’s archives, library and gallery included 800 papal documents, 20,500 volumes in the Old Library, 60,000 in the New Library, 500 incunabula, 200 manuscripts on parchment, 100,000 prints and separate collections.

The first trucks, carrying paintings by Italian old masters, were ready to go less than a week from the day Dr. Becker and Schlegel first arrived in Monte Cassino. Each vehicle carried monks to Rome as escorts; in over one hundred truckloads the convoys nearly depopulated the Abbey’s monastic community.

The task was completed in the first days of November 1943. In three weeks, in the middle of a losing war, in another country, it was quite an achievement.

Monte Cassino and Cassino have different meaning for the various participant nations of the battles. For the western Allies, monuments and inscriptions invoke God and country and sacrifice and freedom; for the Poles it stood as a "symbol of hope for their country." For the Germans and their veterans it was altogether different. Monte Cassino "represented the courage ... of their soldiers defending against Allied matériel strength," superior numbers and overwhelming firepower, a precursor of events to come. They "fought with ... great skill ... No crimes stain the German record here, nor were there any self-inflicted horrors like Stalingrad," and — that they were able to "save the treasures of Monte Cassino and the museum and gallery of Naples [endures as] a point of particular pride."**

** Ref. Wikipedia

Letters to Cassino | Initial Concept

Introduction

In the previous post I talked about how we find identity in landscape - particular places we hold to be of significance.

Nowhere provides a better example of this for New Zealanders than Gallipoli. Over recent decades increasing numbers of Kiwi’s (and I use that label deliberately) have been flocking to this barren and rocky promontory for intangible, spiritual reasons. A pilgrimage to Gallipoli has become a kind of Kiwi Hajj; an important element of the great “overseas experience”, often undertaken as part of the journey home. ANZAC Cove is regularly described as the crucible in which our national identity was forged.

There are strong connections between places of conflict and our national identity. I am keen to explore this.

Mac & Monte Cassino



Gallipoli, Paeschendale, El Alamein, Monte Cassino. These are places with resonance for New Zealanders whether or not we fully understand what occurred, why or even which conflict.

Having a new child tends to kindle an interest in your lineage and heritage. This has certainly been true for my wife who still has a grandmother alive. While exploring family connections and looking through old photos one turned up of her late grandfather, Mac, amongst the rubble of Monte Cassino.

Mac’s service at Cassino was well known. Indeed it is mentioned frequently by his widow, children and grandchildren. That Mac was a Cassino veteran is a strong theme in the family’s identity. It causes my wife to get up at 5.30am every April 25th to stand in the rain and cold at a dawn service, wherever she happens to be, even though family knowledge of the campaign and what part Mac played is sketchy at best.

I want to find out more about the man and the place. What happened at Monte Cassino and why. What role did Mac play, what would he have witnessed, and possibly felt about it? I want to find all this out, for my wife and for my daughter. There is also a second element, gathering the shared stories about Mac and Monte Cassino and explore how they are important in helping to bind the family and if and how they diverge from fact. And does that matter?

If I was a writer I’d write about it. If I was a film-maker, I’d make a documentary. But I’m a painter, so I’ll try to use my skills and experience to create a body of artwork that tells the story as best I can.

The plan

The working concept is Letters to Cassino – an imagined correspondence over 65 years between Mac and a Cassino citizen.

The project will have several phases, although not necessarily sequential:
• Gathering the family’s artefacts – shared stories, photos, letters etc
• Researching official records
• Internet and library research
• Onsite research – a visit to Cassino
• The development of a body of artwork
• Exhibition of artworks