Battle Lines: Australian Artists At War (2004) By Scott Bevan
 
For as long as Australians have been serving in wars, the victories and losses, battles and faces have been recorded by artists. What is it like to be an artist in war? How does the experience of war change artists and how, in turn, has their work changed Australians' view of themselves, their country and their involvement in conflict?
 
Award-winning journalist Scott Bevan put these questions to Australian artists who have recorded, been affected by and responded to theatres of war, including Sir William Dargie, Nora Heysen, Ray Parkin, Bruce Fletcher, Rick Amor, Ray Beattie, Wendy Sharpe and Peter Churcher. Their stories are fascinating, painting a vivid picture of the artists' experience of depicting conflict: the hope and tragedy, inspiration and frustration, humanity and beauty that can be found amid the death and destruction of war. Staining the paper with their own sweat, and drawing with whatever materials they had to hand in hostile and dangerous environments the artists depicted in this book risked their lives to create their art. They were compelled to record what they were seeing, from Alan Moore's bleak sketches of the horror of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Ray Parkin's drawings of the tropical beauty that lay just beyond the barbed wire of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp he was interned in
 
Hard Cover with Dust Cover
310 pages
In Good Condition