9, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.
What can bring a man to kill a mother and child?
I painted 10 paintings of this appropriated photograph from World War II. I titled the series "Hate Kills Love" and took 10 months to paint and repaint the soldier aiming and the mother cluthching her child over and over again struggling, but never nearing any understanding of how such cruelty is possible, not only possible then, long ago, but in every age and country and repeated daily somewhere in the world often paid for by our U.S. tax dollars without any ability to stop the violence done in our name.
But if this image and the rampart violence against women and children embodies how hate kills love, then the converse can be true or can be made true. Loves kills hate and is the only thing that can overcome hate as Dr. King said. Only love and light can overcome hate and darkness. War and violence end only in an escalating spiral of death and despair. When I painted the woman, I felt her fear and the certainty of her death, but mostly I felt her powerful will to live and even more, for her child to live. Somehow in these paintings, she and her child are forever alive at the moment before the soldier makes his irredeemable choice to pull that trigger. He is frozen as well, forever facing the choice to kill innocents.
Click here for all 9 paintings in Hate Kills Love series - http://www.flickr.com/photos/touchart/sets/72157611973754232/
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Art and text by Charleen Touchette 2010
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