Art and War History Collide

It is such and interesting, profound, and blessed experience to ride the line between the worlds of war historian and multi-media artist. My days are spent researching stories of the past - and when I say researching, I mean rabbit-hole tunneling into crevices of stories that never, ever end. Just the way I like it :)

Between traveling to the places where my subjects lived, fought, and died, studying their archives, chasing new threads of potential insight, and creating reports or books or films … I always find the time to creatively express the worlds my brain marinates in all day, every day through the intersection of my imagination and knowledge, my hands, and my art table.

This photograph was found in an archive of a soldier of the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division. It was taken in the final days of WWII, and is of an American soldier with a child soldier of the German army, somewhere in Germany. The original photo was taken through various processes to result in the print that I worked on, and the child’s likeness has been somewhat distorted as an accidental result.

I happen to know this American soldier quite deeply through various documentation he left behind and through his family’s generous communication with me about his whole life - not just his combat days which I know about through a sea of stories his buddies left behind. Unfortunately, the identity of the child soldier will remain a mystery forever.

In some ways, the stories of war that I devote my time to make the most sense when they are brought to creative process.

All the facts of their worlds live in my brain … their individual stories live in my heart.