Convictions

Holy War

Whether an ancient, medieval, or “modern” war, the crusade for a cause, a plot of land or a holy mission demands a price intolerable in human cost. The soldiers spread across the field of “In the Wake” are uniformed in a camouflage of slashing colored strokes—dissonant, clashing green/yellow against violet as nauseating as the scene through which they pass. The violence of rape and murder leaves a pile of women’s bodies in the wake of war. With the posture of invincibility the warriors form a wall across the picture plane.

How war itself transforms young men into soldiers and then into warriors is the exploration of the series of mixed media drawings on unstretched canvas. From the young man’s “Departure” from home and parents, through the process of “Induction,” enduring the “Tour,” and returning in a wheelchair or body-bag for the “Homecoming,” the sweeping suite forms an arc of deforming change.

There is nothing holy or sacred when men take up arms of destruction; indeed, they are themselves also altered by their deeds.

- Jan Wurm