Art In Action will be at Waterperry Gardens in Wheatley

During his time with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan, Graeme Lothian was shot on patrol by a Taliban sniper.

The bullet travelled the length of his forearm before exiting through his palm and the injured hand was the one he used to paint with.

In the months since the incident last year Graeme has had four operations and had to teach himself how to paint for the second time in his career.

Lothian still counts himself as incredibly lucky and feels that in many ways the war wound has been beneficial to his style – where once he might have agonised over a skyline, now he might blur it slightly and has adopted a looser, more painterly style, which does justice to the hot and dusty climes of the Middle East.

Excited about demonstrating his work at Art Weeks for the first time, he says: “War art has a resonance that you just can’t capture with photography. You will have seen countless photographs of the war in Afghanistan but how many do you actually remember? A photograph is a record that relays information, but painting captures something that photography can’t.

“I think it was David Hockney who said a photograph can capture a scene about 99.99 per cent accurately, but what it misses in that small fraction of 0.01 per cent is absolutely everything.”

Another of the country’s best artists congregating to show off their work in Waterperry Gardens in Wheatley, has seen active service.

Douglas Farthing’s 22-year military career led him to create paintings from soldiers’ stories, photographs and the sketches in his diary. Enlisted into the British Army at the age of 16, it wasn’t until years later during his travels to Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East that he began to make sketches in his diaries. He says his passion for war art intensified in 2001 when he was in Macedonia as part of a 2PARA deployment collecting weapons from the Kosovo Liberation Army. “I entered a school which had been destroyed by the war, children’s drawings were stuck on the walls. There were murals of fighting and tanks entering the village. It all seemed to fit together – the power of art in war described by the children on the walls of their school,” he remembers.

Andrew Miller began his career as a landscape painter before negotiating himself on to the front line in Afghanistan to become a war artist. Through various commissions he went on tour with different companies and regiments, but in spite of the training he received, Miller says arriving in Afghanistan was still an immense culture shock. “It is a thrilling experience being on the front line – you are always aware of how vulnerable you are but that makes it more exciting. This vulnerability and excitement increases the tension in your work. Which is why it’s important to record as much as possible when you’re actually there.”

David Rowland’s lifelong interest in battle scenes started as a boy reading accounts of bravery and heroism and seeing war films such as The Alamo. His commissions from the British Army and the Royal Air Force saw him travel repeatedly to Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s. He has also travelled extensively across Europe, Africa and the Far East, gaining what he deems vital experience to create truly accurate works of art. He says his main interest is not the warfare itself, but rather the individuals within the scene. “It is the tenacity of the soldiers and their acts of bravery and courage that provide me with an enduring source of inspiration.”

The combination of these four artists, their experiences and their resulting work has given this, the 36th annual Art In Action, a real buzz already, regardless of the hundreds of other superb artists who will be joining them.

SEE IT
Art In Action runs from today until Sunday from 10am-5.30pm at Waterperry Gardens, Waterperry, nr Wheatley, Oxford