The Apology

The last year of University I enrolled in a course about the history of film in Japan . It was an eye opener and it very unexpectedly lead me to study war. In addition, another course I was enrolled in, I ended up writing a paper about women who were affected by war and were also artists.

What I'd learned about Japan in relation to the women and the Japanese culture was extremely educational. Considering Japan was the only nation in the world to have experienced nuclear devastation. Their personal sense of time, and identity was so poignantly affected like no other culture or any other people on earth.
I was incredibly struck by the personal inner strength of the Japanese women involved with early Japanese feminism, and at the forefront of anti-war protest.

During my studies I read Chris Hedges book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and this book helped me to begin to learn about the atrocities perpetrated upon children and women were and continue to be used as weapons of war.
In the Hot Docs film by film maker Tiffany Hsiung,  The Apology  documents similar atrocities, but wasn't perpetrated by the op-positional warring force, but by Japan's own government and army. It is the story of three women taken as children by the Japanese army and used as sex slaves, or were used as what was called "Comfort Women", to comfort Japanese soldiers during the war.

 I vaguely remember reading this in one of the books I read about Japan, but like so many people we're completely historically unaware that this ever took place. It's such an important story about the extreme injustice and abuse of human rights of children and women used as sex slaves.

When Remembrance Day Comes Around

My dad North Nova Highlander 1941 Springhill Nova Scotia

When Remembrance Day comes round every year I always feel conflicted. I think about my father and his family who escaped Germany during WW11. My father changed his family name in hopes that people would not call him a German Jew.

Though I am not what I would call a pacifist, I hate war, and all it entails, because of it's negative affects on soldiers, their families and civilians alike.

After reading Chris Hedges book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, I have an even deeper negative feeling about war. On  Remembrance Day I can't help acknowledge my sadness and my conflicted feelings. So I am re-posting a blog post for a second time called Home Town Battlefield

This song written and performed by J.P. Cormier brings this message of the toll that war and other traumatic experiences, takes on individuals. I recently heard J.P talk about how when he wrote this song, he then had to face and come to terms with his own PTSD, not so much from war, but from his life. I was happy to hear him talk about this openly, and candidly.

If we can't seem to end war in the world, it does give me hope to know that there are individuals being candid and honest about how PTSD has affected them, to break down the walls of stigma that surrounds mental illness, whether it be through war, or other traumatic events in life.

Ashley Gilbertson - Photographs of Absence

On May 5th 2015, marked  70 Years since the Liberation of The Netherlands from Nazi occupation.  Thinking about this fact, and finding out about photographer Ashley Gilbertson was just coincidental, but I thought it timely, especially considering we as a country and nation are still very much involved with war.

I am not a pacifist, but I also never imagined myself ever saying I think a lot about war, but the fact is, I do. How this happened was a culmination of events, like growing up during the sixties, or being what I call an old fringe hippie I suppose. I wasn't quite old enough to be a full fledged Hippie, but I certainly wanted peace like every young person then.

When I looked deeper into the sociology-psychological and economic factors at the root effects and affects of war, I became acutely aware of why it is important for me as an artist, to educate myself about war. I believe none of us can truly understand the abomination of war, and how normalized it becomes. If we have not experienced it ourselves, the way war correspondents do, and those soldiers who are on the front lines, we can not begin to really comprehend war. Tragically it is true I think, that we will never see the end of war, not even the pacifists believe this to be true.

Finding artists who use their art as tool for peace or hopefully a prevention of so much war, gives me a sense of hope. Living in this world so full of violence, artists can provide an educational alternative to war or at least the promotion of peace through creativity.

Communication today is often defined as being done via the cell phone, and the internet. Creativity for me is the essential form of communication, that more often than not, takes place face to face, regardless of the medium. Communication is about 80 percent listening to what is being said, engaging in a kind of inner dialogue, that desires more to understand, rather than to be understood.

Photography it has been said, is either a window or a mirror. The photographer John Szarkawski once posed the question about what photography is.  

" Is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world? " Personally I think it can be either one or both simultaneously.

I think photographer Ashley Gilbertson communicates through his photographs and books having a similar message as the war correspondent Chris Hedges , who also expresses in many of his books about War, it's far reaching affect abroad, and at home.

Hedges states, " Violence has become the primary form of communication".  He also sees war as being the same as drug addiction. In my opinion, both of these individuals are preoccupied with war, and both reflect, and very powerfully convey, the definition of the insanity of war, in that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

In Ashley Gilderson's new book Bedrooms of the Fallen  he provides us with an intimate glimpse through the window of his photographs, that enables us to better understand the world and the artist.

" The War on Terror has become the War of Terror "

                       - Ashley Gilbertson

Louie Palu - Documentary Photographer

Jul 14, 2008 - Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan - An Afghan National Police (ANP) officer who was injured by gunfire sings to birds at an outpost on the front lines in Pashmul in Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.. (Credit Image: © Louie Palu/ZUMA Press)

Copyright:© 2008 by Louie Palu.FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. ANY OTHER USAGE REQUIRES PERMISSION FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHER.

I heard about Louie Palu, a documentary photographer today on Tapestry. I don't have much to say about him, because his story told through his powerful photography speaks volumes. What he says about doing the work he does, and the affect on him personally, reminds me of Chris Hedges who was an American war correspondent.

Ralph Nader - Told You So

This morning I listened to a rebroadcast of the Current. There was a special segment called Project Money. Ralph Nader was talking about minimum wage. I admit, have not read anything by Ralph Nader, but have heard him speak several times through the media, and have always found him to be a highly intelligent man, and a compelling activist, and what he has to say, makes an enormous amount of sense to me. Terry O'Reilly also had a great interview with him many months ago, talking about his book Told You So.

Most artists struggle financially, as do the majority of people globally, and live daily with the fear of financial insecurity and poverty.

 Chris Hedges on the site Truth Dig, and Nation of Change, quoted from Ralph Nader and it demonstrates the injustice, and disproportionate wage gap between rich and poor, comparing it to medieval times.

“ How much political courage does it take to stand up for guys making $7.25 an hour while the head of Wal-Mart is making $11,000 an hour?” Nader asked. “What medieval period had that kind of wealth disparity? " - Ralph Nader

This got me thinking about what Ralph Nader thinks about creativity, and I think I found quote that encapsulates his thoughts, from the site focusing on the film about Ralph Nader An unReasonable Man

 " The students are not learning. They're not learning citizen skills. They're not learning how to practice democracy. They're not learning the creative force of their personality, and idealism and imagination.  Maybe if we started talking about citizen globalization, civic globalization, instead of corporate globalization, the world will move forward!  Let not future generations look back on us and say that this was the last generation that refused to give up so little in order to achieve so much."
-- Ralph Nader 

I think this quote indicates how Ralph Nader sees a direct correlation between the educational system and how our economy is run. I think he is of the same mind set as Sir Ken Robinson who believes that there needs to be a paradigm shift in the educational system.

When I think about students not learning citizen skills, it makes me think about B.F. Skinner, who rewarded, and punished rats through his behavioural modification method. Firstly, we are not rats, and are not always rewarded for good behaviour, nor punished by our bad behaviour; and it often it can be the opposite situation, where we are rewarded for bad behaviour and punished for good..

 Oh yes, we can become good citizens even politicians, however often, too many simply learn to manipulate the system, but makes for lousy human beings. I would suggest it isn't enough to learn about citizen skills, as we are in desperate need of learning how to be better human beings.

Home Town Battle Field

I have never seen war, and I am very grateful for that. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to experience war. Those individuals that do, are changed forever, in innumerable ways that for the average person are absolutely unimaginable. Our daily " problems " pale greatly, and seem insignificant in comparison to the affects of war on the individuals that have been on the front lines.

We don't have to look far to see that war, civil unrest, and human rights abuses exist throughout the world.

I became motivated to learn more about the affects of war when I was in University. The main reason was because of Christopher Hedges book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.

This week I saw two extremely compelling items, that coincided in relation to one another. They both moved me deeply. The first was a photography project about the genocide in Rwanda. Most people are very aware of this event, that lead to 800,000 deaths of Rwandans. Pieter Hugo's riveting and powerful photography about the Rwanda genocide and forgiveness, is entitled Portraits of Reconciliation   that is very poignant.
You can listen to the interview on CBC Radio Q program, Portraits of Forgiveness 20 years after the Rwandan genocide.

The now retired Lieutenant-General, and Canadian Senator, Roméo Dallaire, was appointed Force Commander for the United Nations for Rwanda in 1993, where he was witness to this genocide, which later lead him to become a dedicated, and outspoken advocate, for mental health, genocide prevention, human rights and war-affected children. Roméo Dallaire suffers from PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome a direct result of the atrocities he witnessed in Rwanda.

The second item I saw was the singer song writer J. P. Cormier's new and powerful song, Hometown Battlefield go viral, about Veterans and PTSD, what they experience when they go to war, and return home.
J.P.'s song is deeply heart felt, a beautiful expression to honouring our soldiers, and that has now touched thousands of Veterans, soldiers, and their families.

New Painting

“The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.”
― Chris Hedges

As artists and art students we are always being questioned the why of our work, always asked to make ongoing artist statements. This can be somewhat frustrating however I see it as a very beneficial endevour, allowing and enabling the clarification of goals and makes for accountability for what is being created.

After a long discussion with my studio advisor I came away from the meeting feeling encouraged that I have a good foundation to pursue another direction creatively, as I am taking a bit of a u-turn with my work so to speak. Though my advisor felt I should not completely drop what I been recently doing with my series based on Clarissa Pinkola's book, Women Who Run With The Wolves. We both agreed I will return to the series at a later time.

I will continue working in egg tempera, as I am still very committed to continuing to learn about the medium. I have been collecting online photographers of women affected by war to use as subject matter.

Gratefully I have not first hand experience of war. My family Meyers, is a Jewish name. My great grandfather was orphaned when he first came to Minto, from the Europe.  


I hate to think of what may have happened to my great great grand parents and have a sense of loss for not knowing who they were and knowing my great grand parents fled Poland, Germany and the Netherlands because of the war.

My father had his name legally changed from Meyers to Myers because people were calling him a German Jew.  I learned of an internment camp that was established in Minto during WW11.

This unexpected interest in war began to develop for me perhaps at this time I think, as I found myself always wanting to know what happened to my family and circumstances surrounding the war.


Over this last year of university I took two courses, one on Romantic Poetry, which had an ongoing theme about war and the industrial revolution, the other called History Through Film. What I took away from both of these courses was a despairing feeling about man's inhumanity toward man, thinking about how the war so profoundly affects our world. 
In the History Through Film, I was particularly struck how Japan's identity and sense of time was changed, because of the fact that no other country in the world had ever experienced this kind of destruction and devastation from the atomic bomb, all of these events developed my interest in looking further into the meaning of war.


 “In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war's grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb.”
― Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

La Larona - The Weeping Woman

This is my latest painting, La Larona -The Weeping Woman. The story itself is a powerful daunting one that makes you pause, and think about what is really important in life, our relationships.

For me, my relationship with myself, with others, and with the God of my understanding is paramount in my life. That said, it is easy to get distracted and myopic in my perspective at different times in daily life losing touch with the right and wrong of people, places and things. It is having an attitude of living in the future or dwelling on the past and not appreciating or being content in and with the present moment. I have learned the hard way that projection into the future or having regrets from the past is a sure formula for unhappiness and losing your soul. Searching for something outside myself to give me happiness is futile. It makes me think of what Carl Jung refers to as being "Spiritus contra spiritum" .  "Attempting to fill a spiritual void with a material reality", is Jung's definition of addiction.

Lately I have been doing research about war in terms of the differences in the attitude and perceptions that men and women have toward it, and how it is likened to addiction, according to what the past NY Times war correspondent, journalist and Pulizer Prize winner, Chris Hedges states in his book,War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

The world is full of war and sometimes we often wage it with our conscience, those personal conflicts taking place within our own spirits.
I have in the past found myself on the front lines of some one else's personal battle becoming a victim or the one who has victimized in one way or another. I have taken a few emotional hostages in the past, but that's another story.

This last egg tempera painting, of La Larona-The Weeping Woman is the conclusion of this series I have been painting, based on Clarissa Pinkola's book ,Women Who Run With The Wolves. It was not my intention for this to be the last one and I will probably come back to the series again. However I have reached a juncture in my work where I am questioning what that hell am I doing as an artist. I suspect many creative people wonder this and perhaps are like me in search of deeper meaning and purpose to their work and art practice.  I think this is growth. I find myself being pulled and gravitating toward more serious work that explores feminism and global issues. It's much easier said than done and I am feeling a bit adrift right now but I have faith that I will find my way along the stepping stones in my creative path.

War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning?

I 've been trying to stay ahead of my History Through Film class by watching many pre and post war black and white Japanese films. I am always on the look out for information on and off line and of course CBC often provides a great scope of resources, that in turn leads me to writers, artists, books, and video, etc.,  usually broadening  my educational horizon.

Presently I am engrossed in gathering such material for my research paper involving historical Feminism in Japan. I am not at all surprised to see how many women are more often than not, at the forefront of protest against war, particularly in Japanese society. The antinuclear movement was initiated by Japanese house wives in 1954. These women soon collected 30 million signatures against nuclear development of war weapons. I am not surprised by this fact, because war is a man's world, that is life taking, and women as mothers, are life givers, and so it makes sense women would be involved in fighting non-violently for peace.

No where else in the world has a country experienced so profoundly, a change and fracturing of identity and what has been described as the "meaning of time" because of the atomic bomb. Yesterday I spent the day watching I think, one of my all time favourite entertaining films, The Big Lebowski and then, watched a required film for our History Through Film class entitled, Fire On The Plain, based on the 1951 novel,  Nobi, by Shokei Ooka.

These two films might seem diametrically opposed but the common link and theme, being anti-war, though, the presentation and context expressed, is extremely different. Today I happened to hear Chris Hedges on CBC radio, talk about his most recent book, " The World As It Is. " I'd never heard his name until today. He is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, a writer, past war correspondent, turned war philosopher. I was riveted to the radio and listened intently until the interview concluded. I then went on the usual Google search to learn more about him. I found a lecture he'd given in 2004, based on his book, "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning", in 2002. His writing and thoughts are, I would dare say visionary, prophetic like and I think profoundly insightful.

Interestingly he has an English degree and often quotes  and cross references historical poems and writings about war from  Keats, Greek poets and mythology. I found this very engaging because of my brief exposure to these themes while taking my Romantic Poetry class this Spring. We read many poems on the topic concerning war. It was both enlightening, and depressing.

While watching his video, I made correlations between abuse, which is about power and control and war as being about the same . Chris Hedges also makes a comparison with war and addiction, stating,

" The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug. " The correlation and connection he makes between violence and communication is disturbing.
" Violence has become the primary form of communication".
In our western world we naively believe our primary form of communication is the cell phone, online and through social media.

The implications of what he says is profound I believe, and causes me to think deeply about many of the  the statements he makes.

" Human beings become a commodity."

" Euphoria of the crowd propels society over a cliff."

" In the rise of power we always become smaller, it absorbs us and we become pawns."

" Remaining human is the only anecdote and victory."