PUTTING IT IN PAINT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 230, 19 November 1943, Page 21

PUTTING IT IN PAINT

How A War Artist Gets His Pictures

about. getting my pictureswhether I paint them on the spot and so on. Usually I find a vantage point-a safe one in a slit trench preferably — and make rough pencil sketches and sometimes water-colour sketches-which I finish off later at base. I remember the first sketches I did on Crete were almost indecipherable even to myself. When I am with the Division in the Middle East, I travel with a rather picturesque unit composed of the War Correspondents, the Newsreel Cameramen and the Broadcasting Unit. I have a small truck with all my equipment in the back. When I first started in this job I’m afraid I. looked the complete War Artist-I had a tin hat, a pistol on one hip, a box of watercolours on the other, a water bottle in the middle, and several large sketch books under my arm-it used to cause considerable comment from the troops. In the first five minutes of the Battle of Crete I dropped the lot-and very quickly got to work with just a sketch book and a pencil. One of my greatest difficulties in battle is to find out what is going to happen and where. Usually in the finish I have to swallow my pride and ask my batman before I begin to get anywhere at all. However, we make a daily deputation to the Intelligence Officer and so} get a fairly comprehensive idea of the situation-usually, incidentally, finding that the batman was right after all. Having got the picture, I have to get it back to base and through the censornot the least difficult part of the job at all. ; often ask me how I go Sketching Mr. Churchill Painting official portraits is another job I find extremely interesting, although naturally my subjects can seldom give me more than a sketchy half-hour for a portrait. Mr. Churchill couldn’t give me any time at all-in

Cairo he gave the cameramen one and a-half minutes, and timed them on his watch. I had to follow him about at El Alamein to get a sketch of him walking in the desert in his famous boiler suit with pith helmet, gloves and white umbrella, ; By the way, when he went to Russia in that suit, they asked him "Is it a uniform?" "Oh, no!" said Mr. Churchill, "it’s not a uniform-it’s unique." I think my best assignment, though, was with the famous Long-Range Desert Group. When it comes to be told, their story will take the place in this war of Lawrence of Arabia in the last-it is a story of incredible adventure. The paintings which I did while with them are in my new show at the temporary National Art Gallery in Wellington. They are of country (eerie and picturesque desert it is), which had never been painted before and had scarcely been explored before the war. His Favourite Subject And lastly, there is the subject which is my favourite of them all-the Western Desert-by day, hard and flat, yet with the evening shadows it takes shape in rich contrast of soft ochres and greys set off by almost black shadows. And against it all is the pano-. ply .of war-the trucks and guns softened by camouflage and dust-the pennants of the tanks waving above it. There is the ceaseless moyvementthe dust cloud lifting and falling like a curtain on a vast stage-the trucks and men appearing suddenly in sharp contrast as the dust lifts-with brown bodies against mottled camouflage-to disappear again into the haze of dust. There are the towns: Tobruk with its white ruins and its harbour full of wrecks in picturesque profusion; Tripoli like a stage setting with its palms and marble columns; and at the end like a prize, there are the fields of .Tunisia decked with a riot of wild flowers. I can only hope that my next subject will be as good,