Onward Christian Soldiers

The painting depicts a lone soldier (in brown) marching as to war following his call to duty. The halo (in orange) around the Christ beckons him forward as he marches over the green fields in obedience.  In the top corners of the painting are God as the eternal circle, and the Holy Spirit as the wind passing through a window, representing the Holy Trinity.  

This is a love story on a biblical scale.  Whilst the painting deliberately makes a strong reference to the moment of Christ's crucifixion, it was painted with a wider spiritual message in mind.  Sacrificial love puts your own wants to one side to serve another.  "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."  Many servicemen reflect upon their faith at times of conflict and perhaps question the notion of being slain whilst ​serving their country.  In overcoming their own fear they routinely  put themselves in harm's way or make the ultimate sacrifice.  Sacrificial love is as true today as it ever was.

The white crosshairs extending from the crucifix suggest setting your own sights on such love, obedience and sacrifice. 







Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

Never Ending Story

The inspiration for the painting came from my struggles in coming to terms with Complex PTSD and my subsequent medical discharge from the Army.

The initial focus of the painting are the red tears in perpetual rotation set within an eyeglass of a periscope.  Just as a periscope restricts the viewer to a rather narrow field of view, I found that I too had become fixated on a limited range of issues surrounding my injury.  My prolonged bouts of despair brought about by intense and disturbing rumination about my condition, recovery, future employment and wellbeing became a never ending story playing and replaying in my mind.  
 
I have now started to broaden my outlook and explore other areas of life happening all around me.  The blue window and the surrounding sunshine in the rest of the painting depict an optimism and appetite for the future.  The blue pathway over the moated rampart in green invites the viewer to voyeuristically look into the periscope and perhaps reflect upon what areas of their life they have become fixated on at the expense of the bigger picture. 








Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

Compassionate Voyage

The painting was completed during a six-month inpatient stay at the Bethlem Royal Hospital whilst I underwent intensive compassion-focused therapy for Complex PTSD.  My therapist inspired the painting when she explained the discovery of the brain’s neuro-plasticity.  Building new neuro-pathways through the application of compassion-focused therapy took me on a painful yet necessary voyage to learn to hold my trauma differently in an effort to alleviate my suffering.
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With every session of therapy, self-reflection and acceptance these new compassionate neuro-pathways  mutually supported each other as they replaced old trauma and threat focused pathways.  This progressive movement set me on a compassionate voyage of healing.  

Using 60 dark and light tones of hand mixed greens the composition has a clear direction of travel.  I hope the painting will inspire the viewer to embark on their own compassionate voyage to notice their own personal suffering and draw upon their inner-wisdom and courage to take positive steps to change their lives for the better.







Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

26 Weeks in Bedlam

During my first 26 weeks in Bedlam (Bethlem Royal Hospital) my therapist encouraged me to put compassionate full stops at the end of trauma memories.  For so long the same intrusive thoughts and flashbacks had been living rent-free as unwanted guests in my mind.  Learning about compassion helped me face distress, tolerate it, and with warmth and non-judgement, I was able to connect with my compassionate self and inner-wisdom and hold my traumas differently.  For the first time in 7 years of treatment I put compassionate full stops on the most painful of traumas. 

Each full stop adorning the window represents a week of therapy in Bedlam.  The steps before the window invite the viewer to walk up to the window and see through past trauma and consider the opportunities presented by a values driven life.  The colour palette and shape of the window suggest travel to foreign lands, spices, fruits, and dyed fabrics hinting at a growing confidence to look to the future and experience a wider common humanity.  Reaching out and sharing our very existence is vital to our well-being and recovery.  No need to hide away anymore.







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Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

War Flag

​This is the War Flag of the British Army.  It is in the ratio of 3:5 rather than 2:1 like the Union Flag (commonly referred to as the Union Jack).

The words inscribed into the wet paint read, "As bloodied colours are freedom's stain,  Shattered limbs and hidden wounds remain".  These are my own words and my personal reflection on the legacy of war.  The blood shed on the battlefield in making the ultimate sacrifice is freedom's stain. The cost of that freedom marks our battle colours and soaks into our national consciousness.  For the Servicemen and Servicewomen who sustain life changing injuries there remains the enduring physical and mental injuries of war.  For those that lost a loved one or care for a wounded veteran the hidden wounds often run just as deep.  This is as true today as it ever was. 

​Originals of this composition can be commissioned upon request. £3800.  Acrylic on canvas

Compassionate Voyage II

Following the sale of Compassionate Voyage, I painted a subtly different version of it for HRH The Prince of Wales to view at Spencer House.  The meaning of the painting is the same however with a very slight change to the composition and as none of the colours are out of the tube it does have a different feel.


















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Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" SOLD

Paper Aeroplanes

Paper Aeroplanes was an image that appeared to me during a session of therapy at the Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit,  the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam).

The movement in the painting comes in the form of paper aeroplanes which depict five painful emotions of sadness, anger, shame, guilt and anxiety, trying to rest and be accepted within a compassionate landscape.   I have sincerely tried to emotionally feel the paper aeroplanes landing, yet to date the process is met with overwhelming hot gusts of the five painful emotions which act together to give the paper aeroplanes lift so they remain in perpetual motion.  Although they haven't landed yet my motivation and commitment offers them courage to do so.

Green is the colour of compassion and hence the colour of the landscape.  The lotus flower suggests the balance of mind, body, spirit and the potential for compassionate rebirth.  A flower of such beauty which blossoms from the mud resonates with my own struggle through trauma whilst striving to write a different ending to the one within which I currently sit.   The 28 tiles of the runway and moon halo around the lotus acknowledges the lunar cycle and regulation of emotions.   The number 44 at the base of the runway is simply my age when I painted the painting and is a nod toward compass bearings you see on all runways.  
The window represents my eyes, as eyes to my soul where this scene takes place.  




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Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

Lustful Ruminations

This painting was completed in my room during another admission to the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam).  

Rumination is a conjuring trick of the threatened mind. It convinces you that a quantum of solace is possible through repetitive cognitive reasoning. The truth is it prevents you from wholeheartedly opening up to the difficult emotions that lay behind the theme in question.  Continually replaying images and thoughts in your mind in a forlorn hope to rewrite the past and shape the future, to avoid for example sadness, inhibits true compassion in holding your distress without judgement, warmth and wisdom.

Lustful rumination is based on an interlocking 12 sided shape.  I designed it in such a way that the shape is actually impossible in three dimensions, a trick, just like rumination.  The colour choices are deliberately lustful and reminiscent of Chanel lipsticks.  When overwhelmed with trauma and suffering it is entirely natural to ruminate about a better or perfect  life.  A perfect life with the perfect partner to share it with, the perfect job to identify yourself with, and money and power with no suffering; an impossibility.  In lustful rumination you can avoid life, suffering and all responsibility.  This lust can include jobs which you desperately want, or have had in the past and lost, and out-of-reach or forbidden relationships you yearn for whilst seeking safety, intimacy and love where your desires and needs are met and your wounds healed.  I wonder if your Lustful Ruminations are any different to mine?  

Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" ​SOLD

Compassionate Breakthrough

This painting was conceived during a session of therapy where I was encouraged to leave the battlefield in my mind and walk towards the light. 

My perfect nurturer, therapist and I held hands.  As I counted down from 10 to zero we stepped towards the light feeling the ground beneath us.  This was a disorientating experience as my mind warped with painful images and intense emotions in leaving a place that had become part of my inner landscape.  At zero we passed through the light and came back to 2018; a 12 year journey.  It was an exhausting and deeply painful experience.

Again painted in greens with desert colours and Afghan skies it is perhaps my most technically demanding painting taking over 200 hours to complete. 












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Acrylic on canvas 30"x40" SOLD

Kajaki

This painting follows on from Lustful Ruminations with a pattern motif still evoking a never-ending mental process of going over the same issues in a hope of making sense of the past.  

In the aftermath of Afghanistan I turned to art to express in a visual way the emotions, feelings, thoughts and meanings associated with that period of my life.

It is a beautiful country and I have tried to reflect that in this piece named after a village in the north of Helmand Province which has particular significance for me.  In my own mix of blue I used a large amount of one of the most expensive and rare pigments in the art world, Lapis Lazuli, obtained from the semi-precious stone mined in Afghanistan.  Using a pigment from a part of the world I cared so much about and transforming it into a meaningful work of beauty is my own way of re-framing the past and remembering the people of that land.

I would welcome a commission to paint this on a much larger scale.

Oil on canvas 30"x 40" SOLD

Purchased by Philip and Catherine Mould for their private collection.  "Martin's work gives us great pleasure.  It sits on our stair wall and radiates intelligence and beauty.  It also causes many to linger, engage and question". https://philipmould.com

Field Justice 

The sword in the centre of the painting replaces the figure of Justitia who would typically hold the scales of justice in her left hand.  In the military law context and particularly in times of war or armed conflict it is the responsibility of the military lawyer on the ground (represented by the sword) to make decisions and give advice on the legal use of lethal and non-lethal force.  The interpretation of the laws of armed conflict, rules of engagement, targeting directives and national laws must be weighed up and balanced against circumstances as they unfold on the ground whilst being mindful of tactical, strategic and political objectives.  Justice is therefore delivered in the field by being steadfastly rooted in that environment yet simultaneously retaining the ability to be sensitive to a multitude of factors presented by a fearsomely ambiguous operational dynamic and delivering time and time again pragmatic and apposite decisions and advice.

In the background is a Dam with a question of whether it is a river flowing from it or it has been breached?  In the Second World War under Operation Chastise the Dambusters breached the Mohne and Eder Dams.  Now, further to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, authorising such a target nowadays would be hard to justify.  

In the top left of the painting is the moon.  The moon is always associated with emotion and of course Field Justice has a direct affect on not only the civilian population but also those engaged as combatants.  So the moon watches over the scene as a reminder of the human impact of war. 

​Commissioned by the President of the Law Society for England and Wales Mr Simon Davis.  Acrylic on canvas 30"x40"
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