Great Art: George Gittoes’ War Paintings of 90’s

Well, here’s my third daily post in a row, I haven’t done that in along time! It’s be awhile since my last art gallery post too! I’ve picked NOT the nicest theme for Tuesday morning but maybe no one wants to see any of these images any morning? Sorry, not sorry!

George Gittoes is an Aussie artist/painter/filmmaker, who got the fun job of going some war thorn African countries with the Australian army to draw and then paint want he seen there in the 90’s. I think, he’s done more than a few versions of each paintings of these paintings below because yeah, they’re great horrible subject matter but mainly because he couldn’t get them out of his head! I think, these still are some of his most well-known art work plus they’re way more in this series but I’ve only picked out half-a-dozen faves. He’s a living artist and looking up his age, he’s 70 years old but I was thinking he was much younger. All works are oil on canvas minus the drawing in the middle or what I’ve label below as the original sketch. What I remember he drawn a lot of sketches like that, taken a lot of photos, used his video camera to record stuff and then the paintings weren’t done until he got home and into his art studio. Here’s his website linked, if you wanna check out more of his art? Let’s stop typing and I’ll leave at that!

Foretaste Of Horror: Salvage, 1990-92

Shit, 1997

Shit (original sketch), 1993

Night Vision, 1998

Shatter Chatter, 1996

The Preacher, 1995

Today’s song to go with today’s art to end this post can be War by Idles from this year’s new album Ultra Mono which I guess, after a little while isn’t as great as their last album but it’s OK album but I think, this one is my fave track from it! Let’s included the lyrics just so everyone can read what the hell he’s singing:

[Verse 1]
Wa-ching!
That’s the sound of the sword going in
Clack-clack, clack-a-clang clang!
That’s the sound of the gun going bang-bang
Tukka-tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk-tukka
That’s the sound of the drone button pusher
Shh, shhh, shhh!
That’s the sound of the children tooker

[Pre-Chorus]
Ahhh! (ahhh!)
Ahhh! (ahhh!)
Ahhh! (ahhh!)
Ahhh! (ahhh!)

[Chorus]
This means war!
Anti-war!
WAR!
This means war!
Anti-war!
Anti-war!

[Bridge]
Send Sally to the sandbox, baby
Send Johnny into open fire
Send Sally to the sandbox, baby
We’re gunning for the stone-faced liars
Send Johnny to the sandbox, baby
Send Sally into open fire
Send Johnny to the sandbox, baby
We’re gunning for the stone-faced liars

And we’re all going straight to hell

Cheers! 🙂