War Cuts

For some twenty years after my encounters in Vietnam, I experienced dreams about the war; however, I refrained from speaking openly and publicly of my military service. Since the Vietnam War was so unpopular with so many of the American people, veterans did not reveal their participation in that conflict. When I was returning home from Hawaii through the San Francisco airport in my dress green uniform, some young people approached me and spat upon me in disgust. In their minds I was a 'baby killer' and a 'war monger.' They had no idea who or what I really was or what I stood for. It has now been 40 years since the Vietnam War, and I have found myself ready to make art again about my remembered experiences. This suite of woodcut prints represents the primary substance of these experiences.—Don ScholThe images represented in this suite are based on my personal experiences, while I served in Vietnam as Combat Artist. Some of the images literally depict what I actually witnessed and experienced; however, others symbolize something I felt about a particular experience or collective experiences, events I could not simply and adequately express in a naturalistic (photographic) way. This more expressive approach to creating imagery was characteristic of those artists of the German Expressionist movement and from whom I have inherited my own personal style of imagery, especially through the medium of the woodcut print. Those artists whose work I am particularly attracted to and inspired by, such as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Max Beckmann, were themselves subjected to the horrors of war during World War I. Consequently, I find a kinship with them and their style of expression.