Ars Longa Vita Brevis

Memorial Day always brings to mind for me a Civil War battle in which two of my great-great grandfathers fought. One lived, one died. 

On February 27, 2017, about four months after leaving government, I drove from my home in northern Virginia to the Cedar Creek battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley. I was there to do a little research on family history. I drove straight to the spot known as Thoburn's Position - on the crest of a hill and field that slopes gently down to Cedar Creek. This is where Col. Joseph Thoburn's First Division, VII Corps had been posted, the far left of the Union line. I stood at the top of the field, the very spot where on October 19, 1864 Addison Cook, my great great grandfather on my father's side, had died. Addison was serving at Thoburn's Position in Battery D of the 1st PA light artillery. He was killed when Thoburn's Position was overwhelmed in a predawn attack by Confederate forces.

The Field Was Alive with Ghosts

I shuddered looking down at the now-peaceful vista -- the wide field and rolling Virginia hills, the house and barn that mask the spot where the Confederates forded Cedar Creek, the more distant trees that mark the spot where Cedar Creek flows into the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. The field was alive with ghosts.

George P. Morgan, a member of Battery D who survived the battle, later recalled that he lay wounded, without medical attention, shot in the left hip and knee, for much of the day. He said he was "surrounded by about 70 or more dead and wounded men, some in severe agony." One of those men was my great great grandfather. He and the other casualties of Battery D reportedly died in hand-to-hand fighting, likely bayoneted or clubbed to death with muskets.  I later found a grave marker for Addison in the nearby Winchester war cemetery.

It Has Haunted Me Ever Since 

The sight of that field at Cedar Creek has haunted me ever since my visit. I tried to exorcise it with a straightforward painting, a 12 x 9 representational view of the field itself. I called it "Field of War", and my son now owns the piece. While a fair rendition, it left me unsatisfied. I felt I should acknowledge somehow my great great grandfather's death. The thought gained further impetus when, not long after my visit to the battlefield, I learned through genealogical research that a second great great grandfather, on my mother's side, had also been at Cedar Creek that day. His name was Uranus Stacy and he served in the 29th Maine Infantry, part of the 1st Division of XIX Army Corps, at the center of the Union line. Stacy served two enlistments, and returned to Saco, Maine after the war, where he married, and had five children including my great grandmother Kate Stacy. Uranus was an early Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. He lived to the age of 86. Addison Cook, by contrast, was 30 when he fell at Cedar Creek. He left behind a wife and four children, including my great-grandmother Jenny Cook.

On Deliberate Disharmony

I decided to commemorate both ancestors in a second piece. This time, however, I did a drawing and underpainting in Prussian Blue of a live soldier with a musket and a dead soldier who lay as he had fallen in a trench. The mainly blue vista on the left shows the detritus of battle, the green vista on the right shows the peaceful battlefield memorial area as it is today. The colors are deliberately jarring, and the trees are scraggy screeches against the sky.  War is not harmonious and neither is this view. I called the painting "Field of Death" and it can be viewed in the "Memory" collection on my website.  It is currently at the framers but will be available in a few weeks.

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