My recent experiences as an aid worker in Guatemala reminded me that the real victims of government corruption and international conflict are almost always the innocents of society. Based on eyewitness accounts of World War II air raids, these paintings are a tribute to those who are scarred and destroyed by conflict.
"They came just after dark, and somehow you could sense from the quick, bitter firing of the guns that there was to be no monkey business this night."
(Detail, Full Light)
"In my room, with its black curtains drawn across the windows, you could feel the shake from the guns. You could hear the boom, crump, crump, crump, of heavy bombs at their work of tearing buildings apart. They were not too far away."
(Detail, Partial Light)
"You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires...Immediately above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink."
(Full Painting, Full Light)
(Full Painting, Full Light)
"It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire...And now and then...twinkled incongruously a permanent, genuine star - the old-fashioned kind that has always been there."
(Full Painting, Partial Light)
(Full Painting, Partial Light)
All quotes are excerpts from correspondent Ernie Pyle's 1940 eyewitness account of the London Blitz. To read more, please visit Eyewitness to History's website.
For more information on how you can help those affected by international conflict, please visit the UNHCR's website.
