BosNet ARTICLE: Painting a Not-So-Pretty Picture
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From: Filipovic Vanja <vfil...@haverford.edu>
Subject: BosNet ARTICLE: Painting a Not-So-Pretty Picture
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B o s N e t - April 16, 1998.
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Painting a Not-So-Pretty Picture
Naval Artist Records War-Torn Bosnia and Reconstruction Efforts
By Marylou Tousignant
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 16, 1998; Page M05
The rugged terrain of war-torn Bosnia is a world away from the gentle
Virginia countryside
that John Charles Roach calls home, but it is never far from his mind.
That's especially true these days, as the 55-year-old artist and
historian nears completion of his
latest project: 150 oil paintings and pen-and-pencil sketches depicting
the international
peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, the former Yugoslav territory nearly
destroyed by 3 1/2 years
of ethnic bloodletting and civil unrest that began in 1992.
Roach, a captain in the Naval Reserve, was activated and sent to Bosnia
in June 1996 by the
Joint Military History Office, a wing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to
document the NATO peace
effort. He spent nearly seven months there, hitching rides with friendly
helicopter pilots to
remote sites where he would hook up with soldiers from any of the nearly
30 countries taking
part in the reconstruction operation.
Lugging a 65-pound sea bag containing extra clothing, pencils,
sketchbooks, note pads, a
"hen-tracked" road map and a dime-store pocket camera, Roach slogged
along with the troops,
observing as they cleared roads, rebuilt bombed-out bridges and
reestablished communication
lines to restore order in the strife-riddled land.
"Somebody once asked me what the color of Bosnia is," Roach said during a
recent interview
at the Washington Navy Yard, where his artwork is being collected for a
D.C. showing this
summer. "And I said, 'Distressed green.' It's almost a bilious green. The
fields look
distressed, the trees look distressed -- scraggly and skinny -- and the
people look that way,
too."
Roach said his paintings attempt "to put a very human face on a very
difficult situation. You
have no idea how these people had made a mess of their [homeland]. Every
last cotton-picking
bridge, it seemed, had been bombed. Obviously, you can't restore the land
to commercial
viability, or restore the farms, or the people themselves, without fixing
this stuff. That's what I
was looking at -- what did we do to restore the civility of living in
Bosnia? This is a visual
document of history in the making."
Thousands of people died during the nearly four years of factional
warring in Bosnia, and
damage to its infrastructure has been estimated at more than $20 billion.
The 1995 Dayton
accords opened the door to a fragile peace, allowing NATO forces to begin
the formidable task
of helping rebuild the country.
Roach's artwork reflects a microcosm of the multinational peacekeepers,
31,000 of whom
(including 7,800 Americans) remain in Bosnia.
His paintings show, among other things, French soldiers sharing coffee
and rations with
Muslim villagers, Polish troops relaxing by a campfire, British engineers
shoring up bridge
footings, and a small U.S. contingent (Roach among them) tiptoeing across
a minefield behind
two Serbian guides. There are women in babushkas leading cows, smiling
Serbian
schoolchildren, a father and son perched on a hay wagon, and rows of
graves marked with
sticks.
Roach, who grew up in Norfolk, the son of a naval architect father and a
musician mother, has
a long artistic resume that includes a 56-by-16-foot mural of the USS
Arizona for the
battleship's memorial at Pearl Harbor; an even larger oil painting of the
frigate USS
Constitution that hangs in the office of the Navy Federal Credit Union in
Vienna; and work on
murals in the U.S. Capitol.
Roach, who studied in Paris and holds degrees from the University of
Maryland and American
University, works out of two studios, one at his restored 1832 farmhouse
in the Shenandoah
Valley hamlet of Mount Sidney and the other at his apartment in
Alexandria. He keeps the
in-town apartment to ease the commute to his "day job" as a public
information officer for the
Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland.
In 1990, Roach was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to sketch Operation Desert
Shield, work that
was exhibited later on Capitol Hill. Earlier, he documented the Navy's
role in Vietnam after 18
months traveling in the country and sailing with the 7th Fleet.
With an abundance of his art lining the corridors of the Pentagon and
elsewhere, Roach jokes
that he can walk into almost any Navy office or ship wardroom and
introduce himself by
saying, "Hi, I did that picture on your wall."
Now, with Bosnia, he has added a different dimension.
"What John has done is quite superb," said his boss, William S. Dudley,
director of naval
history. "If people could see this art . . . they'll be quite satisfied
that it's a very worthwhile
effort we're making over there."
Dudley is not alone in his praise. When Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the
supreme allied
commander in Europe, was in town a few weeks ago, he checked out Roach's
work and
requested that select pieces be sent to his headquarters near Brussels
for display.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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