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A cardboard shipping box filled with negatives, prints, maps, and brochures--all remembrances of Vietnam--sits on the bookshelf.  Once in a while, every few years or so, I pull down the box and ask a few questions about the images inside.  Just as the photographer/soldier captured the images of the children of war, so have the children's images captured my heart. Their voices called out to me to paint their portraits, to consecrate and remember them.

And so, using the reference photos taken by my husband during the time he served as an Infantry Officer in Vietnam, I painted portraits and figurative works of some of the children in the photographs.

In addition to the portraits, I painted a pastel landscape of the area of Fire Support Base Rawlins, water filling the ruts made by military tracks. My goal was to create a pleasing landscape which did not reflect the devastation of war. 

Also included in this body of work is a charcoal portrait of my husband, the veteran who took the photographs some 47 years ago. My portrait of him has been accepted for publication in Strokes of Genius 8: Expressive Texture, to be published in 2016. It was also my winning entry in the Tennessee Top Ten Competition sponsored by the Portrait Society of America.

The children's portraits, as well as the reference photos, the pastel landscape, and my husband's charcoal portrait, have been compiled into a small book which I am offering through Blurb: http://www.blurb.com/b/6717424-where-are-they-now

There are more children from 1968 Vietnam in those reference photos that call out to be painted. I'm sure I will create Volume II.