Sorry for the necropost, but an update on Karen Bailey's work:
Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Ottawa Sun
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/columnists/earl_mcrae/2009/08/26/10626951.html
Artist's Afghan works get the brush off
Military refuses to promote paintings they helped fund, of our troops in Afghanistan
By Earl McRae, Sun Media
Last Updated: 27th August 2009, 6:56am
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A hurtful, cruel snub, but so bloody typical in this no-rate country symbolized by The Canadian Disease: Small, dull, dreary, half-dead minds shrivelled by a crippling apathy, inertia, and disinclination to dislodge oneself from life’s comfortable sit-but-do-nothing crapper.
Karen Bailey, war artist, has had to resort to self-exhibiting her magnificent paintings in the corridor outside her small studio in an old former school on Crichton St. because she can’t get Canada to give a damn about her work, including, most inexcusably, the Canadian military that flew her to Afghanistan because it was supposedly proud of the men and women doctors and nurses in our armed forces who’ve been attending sick, wounded, and dying soldiers and Afghan civilians at the Kandahar base hospital.
But are you ready for this? The Americans, the Americans heard of Karen Bailey’s paintings of our brave Canadian doctors, nurses, and medical technicians at work, and the Americans will be proudly exhibiting her acrylic images for an entire month next year at the University of New Orleans’ prestigious St. Claude Gallery, part of the largest museum devoted to Second World War artifacts in the United States.
“We are very much looking forward to this show,” said A. Lawrence Jenkins, professor and chair of the UNO department of fine arts, in a letter this week to Karen Bailey. And any and all costs, including Karen Bailey’s flights, meals, and accommodation, will be looked after by the gallery.
God bless you, America.
Shame on you, Canada.
If, however, you are not one of the apathetic, inert, Canadian dullards, you can show your caring, your pride in our soldiers, by showing up for Karen Bailey’s exhibit from the 28th of September to the 9th of October between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (closed Sunday) at 200 Crichton St.
“I hope people don’t mind that all I will be serving is water,” she says in her small, cramped, rented studio on the top floor of the old school, “but I’m putting it on myself and it’s all I can afford.”
Bailey, whose paintings in various genres have been exhibited in Britain, Ireland, the U.S. and Canada, some of which are in private collections, was not at all motivated by personal profit when her application was accepted by the Canadian Forces Artists Program to go to Afghanistan; her desire to focus on the hard-working, selfless, unsung medical personnel, not the combat soldiers.
“I just wanted to create this legacy of paintings. The department of national defence gave me the impression it really cared that I was doing this. They paid my way there and back on a military plane.”
She spent a week at the base hospital in June 2007 sketching and taking photographs of our military medical doctors and nurses at work, in and out of the operating room, and what she experienced has changed her forever.
“They are such wonderful, devoted, compassionate, inspiring people,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “They are so proud of what they do, they made me even prouder to be a Canadian. It’s so important to recognize them. No soldiers were hurt when I was there, so I saw them attending to civilians; war-injured Afghan adults and children.
“One little girl, she was only eight, they thought they might have to amputate her leg, but one of our Canadian doctors devised a skin-grafting method to save it, and I was there the day she walked out of the hospital.
“Even the Taliban would leave their injured children at the gates of the base to be taken into the hospital. Taliban fighters themselves would come, hoping to be treated. After they were, they were held captive.”
When Bailey got home she immersed herself totally in her war theatre paintings, 20 canvasses, and just recently finished the two-year project. But it wasn’t just recently that, disturbingly, she became aware of an appalling disinterest in her on-going work by the same military hierarchy that approved her trip. She was hoping it might have a desire to proudly show her work of its Canadian doctors and nurses, to proudly show Canadians, to help her in that initiative. Wrong.
“I thought the DND people would like to come and see my work, but there was no interest.”
She wrote letters, she e-mailed, she phoned, asking for its help in showcasing the paintings, maybe in military establishments. The answer was no.
“I was told that if they put them up on a wall, people might think they’re for sale. Or it’d be perceived as favouring an artist.” Thundering bureaucratic idiocy.
She spoke to a high-ranking officer at Camp Borden about showing her work. “When I told him it was contemporary art he said ‘What’s that mean?’ He said they only display tanks and weapons.”
She asked Tim Hortons head office if it could help; it has an outlet on the Kandahar base. “They said it wasn’t the kind of thing they’re into.”
She contacted the Canadian War Museum. “They said it could maybe be considered for an exhibit in 2012.”
She e-mailed officials of more than 60 venues across Canada, some military, that would seem appropriate for her exhibit. “Nothing positive. I’ve had 40 rejections so far, some didn’t bother responding.”
She thought for sure that the surgeon-general of the Canadian Forces, brigadier general Hilary Jaeger (who retired in July) would have an interest in seeing her work and help her in getting it displayed to Canadians. An officer with DND met with Jaeger on Bailey’s behalf.
In his subsequent letter to Bailey — which she shows me — he wrote: “My meeting with BGen Jaeger yesterday was not as productive as I’d hoped.” And Jaeger’s “insight,” he went on, “was to the effect that the CFHS (Canadian Forces Health Service) and CF (Canadian Forces) do not see the work our people do in Afghanistan as ‘extraordinary’— they are doing what they’re trained to do. Accordingly efforts to showcase or immortalize the efforts of personnel in Afghanistan will likely not resonate with the CF leadership.”
Can you believe this crock? What our military doctors and nurses do in Afghanistan is not extraordinary? It’s what “they’re trained to do?” So to hell with showcasing them? Then why did DND allow Karen Bailey to waste her time painting them if they didn’t goddam hugely matter? I’m enraged, and you out there should be too.
Karen Bailey, superior Canadian: 613-562-2497.
Contact McRae at earl.mcrae@sunmedia.ca or leave a message at 613-739-5133, ext. 469.
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Unfortunate...