every morning

the first thing I do is check my emails. That has been my habit for years now, where ever I lived. My family and friends are well spread, and at any time one of them might be awake, sending an email. I used to turn the computer on each morning, but now that it is also my telephone, often I don't turn it off.

The bonus of that is, if I have also left my emails open (not wise, I know) that I don't have to face my home page every day. My home page is stuff.co.nz world news. I have yet to open that and read something that made my day brighter.

For a while I changed my home page, and then I felt irresponsible. I should, ought, need to know what is happening in the world. But actually, no, none of those things. I could live here quite happily in a dream world, pretending they don't exist. Painting pretty pictures. They don't need to reach me, those horrors that are happening out there. But if I do know, can I sit here and not try to do something, even one tiny little thing each day, to try and change what is happening?

Who was it that said that to stay silent is to be as guilty as he who does the deed?

Somehow, almost by accident, I have ended up becoming a volunteer docent for a war museum, and a battle field tour guide. Sometimes it feels wrong, but when I see that I can open someones eyes, take them to somewhere that they might feel another's pain, then it feels right.

Again, almost accidentally, I have begun painting portraits. None of this made sense to me. I asked myself which of my many jobs is my priority? I think it is falling into place. For now, I must improve my portraiture skills. I can practice that while I live here, improve because I must. And then I will paint for peace. And if I must do that through painting the horrors of war, then so be it.

But it wont be the soldiers and places that I paint, or the heroism. I cannot presume to know what those brave people face. When I guide young men fresh from Afghanistan over the mountains around Cassino, nothing of what they have experienced shows in their faces. They keep their pain well hidden.

It is the aftermath, what happened to the civilians, that I choose to paint. Because here I live among those people, and among my elderly friends I see the effects of malnutrition, I hear the tales of starvation, of survival, of living petrified by the bombing, hiding in the caves in the winter of 1944. The images these people carry, of rows of dead soldiers along the road waiting for burial in temporary graves, the smells and the fear, they will take to their graves. But first, it seems that now they need to share them, they need to be heard.

I don't think those paintings will be small. But sometimes, if you want to draw the viewer in, to tell them something so personal that they can't walk away unchanged, then small is best.

Now I am not ready to do that work. I need to paint happy things, to get stronger myself. But one day I will be.

http://www.kayscott-artist.com/Cassino.html

I have to figure out how to update my website again. I want to paint about hope, to promote a culture of peace. But first we must paint reality. Or maybe, in writing this, I have just done that. Maybe I can move on.