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Douglas Farthing: A Soldier's Tale
Green Pebble Spring 2008 issue
When
Suffolk artist Douglas Farthing retired in June 2007 after 23 years in the
armed forces’ parachute regiment, he had a war diary of images he was
able to develop into a rapidly expanding collection of oil, watercolour, and
pen and ink paintings.
Today, these paintings hang in a small, new gallery at the Henstead Art &
Craft Centre at Henstead, near Southwold in Suffolk. They cover Douglas’
years in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans; he is working backwards through
his tours of duty.
‘I’ve always been an artist and have faithfully kept war diaries
throughout my career,’ Douglas says. ‘A quick look back at the
sketch in the diary and then I work. Art is a release; I’m lost in the
twists and turns of the composition, trying to place the viewer into my world.’
This world is one of loss, camaraderie and chaos. ‘Soldiers are at the
sharp end of our country’s politics,’ he says, ‘and are
thrust into some pretty unusual situations.’
As a soldier who never fired a shot in anger and who never killed anyone,
Douglas’ experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan are subtly different from
what the public might expect. He was in Afghanistan in 2002, for instance,
during a period dedicated to reconstruction, not combat. Rather than conveying
violence, his imagery captures the tension of waiting and watching; the tension
of a car search as driver and soldiers surround a civilian vehicle; the tension
of the moment when a helicopter lifts off, its undercarriage painfully vulnerable
to attack...
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