On Veterans Day

 by Gregg Chadwick

(First Published November 11, 2010)

Winslow Homer

The Veteran in a New Field

24 1/8" x 38 1/8" oil on canvas 1865

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Veterans Day is more than just a day off. Instead it is a time to reflect on duty, honor, service, and life. Winslow Homer's The Veteran in a New Field portrays a Union veteran of the American Civil War back at work on the farm. But the painting is not instantly celebratory. There are no angels and there is no parade. Instead a psychic weight seems to be guiding the veteran's scythe as it cuts the stand of grain, much like the volleys of shot and shell mowed down troops, on both sides of that brutal war.

There is hope though in the warm, life giving color of the wheat, a Northern crop, and the cerulean sky. All wars must eventually come to an end. Uniforms are cast off. Homer paints the ex-soldier's jacket and canteen tossed onto the newly cut field. Life does go on.

The soldier will inevitably struggle to find his place in the mundane world of civilian work. And the civilian world struggles to understand these warriors bereft of armor and weapons plopped back into society. Wounds need time and care to heal.

Art can help bridge this gap.

Stories need to be told.

A Painters Light and the Enlightenment

"America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, because a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11. 
The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies." 

-Garry Wills, adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University 

Garry wills' op-ed piece in the New York Times hits hard on the anti-intellectualism and anti-historicism that lies at the heart of the christian fundamentalists backing bush.  Wills observes that enemies come to resemble each other and in their misguided bloodlust and immoral war in Iraq contemporary fundamentalist christians have created their own jihad. 

This is not about mere politics but instead a clash of rational minds against the forces of ignorance and superstition. 

As Americans. as artists, as philosophers, scientists, doctors, writers, musicians, poets, actors, historians, free-thinkers and members of the world community now is not the time to acquiesce but instead the time to remember and declare our American roots in the enlightenment. 

As a painter i believe in light- not just light that bathes us in a warm glow of beauty but light that also reveals and creates a path to understanding. 

Do not let them take the light from us.

Stand strong. 

Gregg