Kandahar on canvas: local artist captures hospital in paintings

 

Karen Bailey’s week in Kandahar has lasted two years in her studio.

 

In 2007 the Ottawa artist travelled to Canada’s Role Three Hospital as a military artist with the Canadian Forces Artists Program. While there, she sketched the doctors, nurses and Afghan patients daily.

 

Two years after her return, the result is 20 acrylic canvases – ranging from the size of a textbook to ones that tower over the artist’s head.

 

“I find coming into my studio every day and being faced with these paintings intense,” Bailey said. “I’ll be very happy when

I can have this work out of my studio, into a gallery, and have other people share them.”

 

As a member of MainWorks Artists’ Studios Co-operative, Bailey has studio space at the Crichton Cultural Community Centre.

 

Her works will be displayed at the centre’s Corridor Gallery from Sept. 28 to Oct. 9, in an exhibit called Triage.

Bailey generally paints the ordinary person: the common man, those behind the scenes.

 

“Everybody has a story to tell,” Bailey said. “I recognize the power of art to tell the story of the invisible people. . . . This is a permanent tribute.”

 

She said the work of the doctors and nurses in Kandahar inspired her.

 

“I know it doesn’t sound entirely right or fair, but I believe that what [the doctors and nurses] do in the hospital is far more traumatic than the guys who are going out in the field,” she said. “In the hospital they are looking at the face of trauma 24-7.”

 

Bailey said she originally applied to the program because a good friend of hers, Karole Marois, travelled to the Netherlands in 2005 as a military artist to depict scenes from the 60th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. Marois had such a good experience that she urged Bailey to get involved with military artistry.

 

After being selected as one of five artists for the 2006-07 program, Bailey said she was told that year’s artists could not actually travel to Afghanistan due to difficulties acquiring insurance.

 

Instead, she got in touch with an American hospital in Landstuhl, Germany – where severely-injured Canadian soldiers are sent – and found that they were willing to have her visit the hospital.

 

Bailey packed her bags – ready to go at a moment’s notice – and waited.

 

She waited for three months.

 

“It was as if I was on call. I’ve never heard of an emergency artist, but I was one,” she laughed.

 

Bailey jokingly said she “blames the power of the press,” for what happened next.

 

The Sun’s Earl McRae wrote an article about Bailey, her appointment as a military artist and her long wait.

 

That publicity was enough to result in Bailey being offered the opportunity to paint the medical personnel at the Role Three Hospital at the Kandahar Airfield.

 

“When I first came back from Afghanistan, I knew that my work had only just begun,” Bailey said. “The two years since I’ve returned have been far more onerous than anything I experienced in Kandahar. The real challenge has been trying to

tell these people’s stories on canvas, and with integrity.”

 

She said she always knew her Kandahar paintings would not be sellable, but she felt compelled to create them.