"The simple objective for a war artist is to record a particular war. You could ask why film and photography is not enough. I think that due to the very nature of painting or drawing, one can exaggerate or highlight poignant themes, atmospheres, moods, and it gives a completely different slant. With mass media, you see so much, so many evocative photographs. We're inundated with news footage and camera work. So you see these remarkable photographs, and then we've forgotten them.
But with a painting you can sit in a gallery, or open a book, and you can consider, and you can ponder what is going on.
Any preconceptions I had before I went to Afghanistan were based entirely on what I had seen in the newspapers and on television. But the reality was completely different."
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