l'air de rien: Prayer for Sarajevo, 1995, but Gaza too

Untitled, Châteaunoir, 1995, oil on canvas, 50 X 42 cm

They cut off noses in Bosnia, Châteaunoir, 1995, oil on canvas, 55 X 45 cm

Untitled, Châteanoir, 1996, oil on canvas, 50 X 42 cm

Prayer for Sarajevo, Châteaunoir, 1995 oil on canvas, 140 X 90 cm

Untitled, Châteaunoir, 1996, oil on canvas, 50 X 42 cm

La Honte, Châteaunoir, 1998, oil on canvas, 150 X 150 cm

The Annunciation, Châteaunoir, 1998, oil on canvas, 150 X 150 cm

L'Enfance, Châteaunoir, 1997, oil on canvas, 150 X 150 cm

Untitled, Châteaunoir, 1996, oil on canvas, 120 X 100 cm

Auschwitz Again, Châteaunoir, 1996, oil on canvas, 150 X 150 cm

Untitled, 1996, oil on canvas, Châteaunoir, 50 X 50 cm

Here are some things I made a while ago back in France in my small studio at the Châteaunoir. It was back during the height of the war in Bosnian war. For some reason I was very affected by it. I had pasted on a wall a cut-out photo from a newspaper of a young boy touching the head stone of his father at a cemetery. it triggered something for me. So I made a few small studies which then became a small series.

I didn't paint this series centred around the war in colour because I was basically afraid that I wouldn't keep the focus on the brutality of what I wished to express. I was also afraid I would obsess about colour and that I couldn't get it right and this prevented me from working quickly. Honestly, I was worried that my perfectionism would bring out my procrastination. This is something I struggled with most of my life.

And as many of us know, war is a destructive activity. The shock of the Vietnam War, not only for both the Americans and Vietnamese peoples, but for the whole world. It was a setback of terrible proportions since the start of the United Nations began after the second World War. Was it too naive to believe that humankind might begin to resolve their conflicts through dialogue and negotiation? Up until then, all we seemed to do upon this earth was plunder and rob while destroying everything in our way. Civilians were casually exploited for labor or sex. So indeed, the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end go the 20th century came as a rude awakening to all who had committed themselves to practical negotiated settlements of disputes.

Today, there are wars raging in Ukraine and in parts of Africa and Asia, but in the Middle East too. Israel, a country I've travelled around in for months, full of the most cultured people in the world is starving the population of Gaza as I write these words out of vengeance for what happened two and a half years ago when Hamas murdered one thousand citizens of Israel. Both sides in this conflict are male and full of hatred. Is it ethnic or religious loathing? One could have asked the same questions about the Bosnian war.

There are idealists, of which I am not one, who believe that Art can change the world. If that were so how could Germany have slaughtered so many people after Johannes Brahms had written his suites Opus 118?

Will civilised societies ever learn? Judging by current wars, it's not likely, but that doesn't mean that poetry and music will not flourish in between foxholes and missiles. Ukraine proves that, and God help them.

When I was packing up the Belvedere in the Drôme to sell it I put about a dozen of these images around the studio. A friend brought her new beau over for lunch, and afterwards we went up to the studio that was mostly boxed and cleaner that it had ever been. The new boyfriend, who was a therapist, began looking at the pictures. I watched him walk slowly around while looking carefully at each of them. When he turned around he had tears in his eyes which moved me terribly.

Sadly, most of those paintings were later ruined here in a flood in Australia and worse, I hadn't taken any photos of them. But here (above) are a few remnants.

As I painted them in my small studio at the Châteaunoir, I was also painting out in the landscape and working in full living colour during this time. So I straddled two worlds of image-making; one from an invented memory in my studio making large paintings like the ones above, the other, from colourful motifs out in Nature. Below, are just a few things from outdoors during those years that reveal the stark contrast of sensibilities that lived within me at the time.