The Old Lie

The Old Lie 24x30"

The title for this piece comes from the poem by Wilfred Owen, whose title is taken from Homer's Ode, "Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori" - "It is sweet and right to die for your country."

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

I prepped the canvas with gesso, cheesecloth, and netting Acrylics in the colours of mud, smoke, and dead vegetation were splashed, spattered and dripped across the surface. Xerox copies of various WWI battles were coloured with water soluble oil pastels and adhered with matte medium.

Rusty bits and pieces of metal, old bullet casings, pieces of torn cloth, bits of brick and rock litter the canvas. As they littered the fields of Ypres, the Marne and Verdun, where men lay dying, with the echo of the guns overhead and "the old lie" whispered on the rising wind.