War Allegories:Passchendaele

From a series based on allegorical interpretations of the complex emotions experienced during visits to First World War battlefield locations. The Allied efforts to take the heavily German defended, high ground around Passchendaele were carried out in appalling weather conditions and petered out in the mud with minimal gains and following immense numbers of casualties. In this piece, I have adopted a very low angle in the picture plane, to emphasise the steeply rising nature of the terrain and the claustrophobic experience of trench warfare, with a mere glimpse of sky and cloud along the top perimeter. Dynamic, expressionistic marks denote chaos and confusion, the artillery shells, the 'Whizz Bangs' and the Mustard Gas. The overall scarlet red has obvious connotations and serves also, to symbolise the fields of poppies that subsequently invaded and colonised this landscape. In this place, almost a hundred years after the event occurred, I became overwhelmed by sensations of the gross futility of this exercise on this salient and of so many others in this conflict and in many others before and since.