I did this painting for a creative project when I was in the MBA program at Queens University. It was the first painting I had done since college and spending a few years as a Paratrooper in the 82nd, about 7 years. I tried to paint something that expressed my feelings at the time reflecting on the years I had spent in the ‘terror’ wars. I tried to express the loneliness of a trooper in the middle of it all, surrounded on both sides by darkness.
I was going for a kind of visual representation of the John le Carre’ line “Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
Below are the concept sketch and paining process.
