The Details 'Fire & Ice: Marine Corps Combat Art From Afghanistan And Iraq' [Archive] - Marine Corps

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07-15-07, 08:39 AM

The fine art of combat
Area native depicts military life in Iraq, Afghanistan

By Steve Siegel

Special to The Morning Call

July 15, 2007

The two words "combat art" might seem, at first, a pairing of strange bedfellows, but even the briefest study of art history shows otherwise. Art and combat have been wedded for ages, and their offspring has given us indelible icons, from ancient statues of Greek and Roman warriors to Winslow Homer's first-hand documentation of the Civil War for Harper's Weekly.

Indeed, if Homer were alive today he would be called a combat artist, although in his day he was termed a "special." Following in his tradition, with pen and brush in hand (and rifle on shoulder), is Marine Chief Warrant Officer Michael Fay, who grew up in Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, and is now one of only two combat artists currently serving in the Marine Corps.

A collection of Fay's drawings and paintings, depicting a personal and very human side of military life, are on view at the James A. Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown in "Fire & Ice: Marine Corps Combat Art from Afghanistan and Iraq."

But if the pairing of art and war can be explained by a simple history lesson, it is much harder to explain why, in this day and age, the slow and laborious process of sketching or drawing co-exists with the instantaneous images of photography and video as a documentation tool. And why would the Marines, of all organizations, even have combat artists?

Fay, a reservist who now lives in Fredericksburg, Va., has been asked these questions many times. He is as aware of the historical baggage of the combat artist as he is the sidearm and sketch bag he carries into the field.

"There is a realism or naturalism to combat art that is directly observational," says Fay. "It's like viewing the third century B.C. Greek statue "The Dying Gaul." From the character of the wounded warrior's hair, what he is wearing and his wound, you know somebody saw that and it made an impression."

In a photograph, reality passes through the camera's lens; the combat artist passes reality through his or her own senses and skills. "I do not want to distill myself out of my art," Fay continues. "A portion of what I do is journalistic, but I certainly don't want the poetry of it to disappear. I'd say that 99.9 percent of my work is based on personal observation, and a central goal of it is the elimination of stereotype. My art articulates what is true and real about the actual experience of war and warriors."

Fay is never told what to draw; he chooses his own subjects. His portraits of fellow Marines depict real human beings, not iconic warriors. Some faces show fatigue, some show reflection, some reveal fear. His sketches document everyday camp chores. "Waiting for the Next Bird Out," for example, depicts a group of Marines, asleep or just plain exhausted, stretched out in the sun waiting for a helicopter ride out of the desolate forward operating base Al Qain in Iraq.

"Study for Guardian Angel" shows a Marine, half asleep, standing guard at high noon in the 140 degree Iraqi sun. The shadow of his wide-brimmed hat almost completely obscures his face -- a classic Winslow Homer detail.

Another sketch, "Chess in a Sand Storm," shows a soldier sitting in front of a chess board in a sand storm, his eyes shut tight as he patiently waits for a respite in the blast to commence the game.

Like the two strands of a DNA helix, art and the military wove themselves into Fay's life as early as grade school. "I was just one of those kids who was drawing all the time -- you know, Greek soldiers wearing helmets with eye slits, tanks exploding, battleships, and so on," he says. His talent was recognized early on, and while attending Salisbury High School he received a Baum Art School scholarship and was president of the school's art club.

He went off to Pennsylvania State University in the early 1970s as a forestry major, but soon changed his major to art. He dropped out and entered the Philadelphia College of Art, dropped out again and enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, finally leaving to join the Marines in 1975.

"I was definitely a rebel, with long hair and all. Joining the Marines was a rite of passage which has colored what I do now," says Fay, who at 53 describes himself as "one of the last of that generation where local kids delivered the paper and the Lehigh Dairy left bottles of milk in the gray box on the porch."

Fay left military service in 1978 and again enrolled in Penn State, this time as an art history major. He graduated in 1982, and the year after re-enlisted in the Marines, this time working in helicopter avionics, until 1993, when he left active service. He was living in Fredericksburg when in 1998 he met Donna Neary, a lieutenant colonel and Marine Corps artist-in-residence , who had a studio there. Fay showed Neary the sketches and drawings he had done during his service years, and she asked if he would be interested in taking over her duties, since she was about to retire.

"The position was to be for the Marine Reserve Corps," says Fay. "I was already in my forties, so it took some paperwork to get the approvals, but in 2000 I officially re-enlisted as a staff sergeant in the reserves."

Fay might be over-simplifying when he says that "the skills required were only that you had to have an eye for art and were also willing to get shot at," but his military credentials, which include tours in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, do include being hit by shrapnel -- in the arm, but fortunately not in his drawing arm.

"It was not like fixing helicopters, doing it all by the book," Fay says about his combat art assignments. "It was so simple -- go to war, do art. Nobody told me what to do. Everyone knew artists were there to do art, and my subjects knew that what they were doing was important and worthy of being documented."

Brian Peterson, senior curator for the Michener Museum, says the exhibit "has been a wonderful revelation of learning for me. In our Baby Boomer generation, we let negative images of the Vietnam War color our perceptions of what the military was like.

"The Marines, in having this program, don't tell the artists to go out and make happy pictures. They really believe in the ideal of freedom of expression -- this is what they are defending," he says.

The exhibit's name comes from one of the works in the show -- a watercolor depicting a sweat-soaked combat engineer hoisting a 122 mm tank round over his head in 130 degree heat paired with another watercolor of a Marine hefting a huge block of ice.

But the title also has a deeper level of meaning for Fay.

"It refers to my personal experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq," he says. "These are experiences of extremes, from the numbing cold of Kandahar in January to the searing 130-degree-plus heat of Babylon in late June, from the deep and engaging hospitality of individual Iraqis to the unpredictable and faceless violence of roadside bombs. The list could go on and on."

Steve Siegel is a freelance writer.

Jodi Duckett, Arts and Entertainment Editor jodi.duckett@mcall.com 610-820-6704

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