War Allegories:Hellfire Corner

One of a series of allegorical interpretations of emotions experienced during visits to First World War battlefield locations. Hellfire Corner close to Ypres was perhaps one of the most infamous and iconic; although this image could be a metaphor for all armed conflicts, historical and ongoing. Unusually for me, the motivation for this piece was a defined physical context, but one in which a profound global event took place. The experience of being in this particular place, almost a century afterwards, culminates in an act of 'expression' that has far more to do with the inner world of the complex emotions I experienced whilst at that place, than a representation of perceived external reality. In a sense, a different 'place' emerges out of an initial, all encompassing experience. Whilst Paul Nash's stunningly poignant and complex, 'The Menin Road' of 1919 is concerned with the conditions close to the aftermath of this engagement. (Hellfire Corner formed a part of the Menin Road) I wanted to attempt to illustrate in a 'retrospective', expressionistic, near-abstract manner, from my imagination, a vision of what 'Hellfire' might actually have been like for an ordinary soldier, whose rank is denoted by the inverted chevron.