February 2, 2001--PaintingsDIRECT.com interviewed painter Nick Gary. |
DB: You were stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army in the 1950s, and your paintings of France, Britain, Italy, and Germany are on PaintingsDIRECT. Can you tell us about your Grand Tour (of duty)?
NG: I was drafted into the Army in ‘56. I was sent to radio telegraph school after boot camp and shipped to Germany in April ‘57 to join the 3rd Armored Division. When I had leave, it was a simple matter of catching the train or a military hop. Military personnel could get on any Air Force plane when space was available and fly free. At times I flew in style, and other times it was a DC-3 with metal benches for paratroopers. I was really fascinated with Europe. This was a far piece from my country upbringings. I hadn’t even seen a lot of the USA at that time. Now here I was staring at the Mona Lisa and strolling up and down the Seine. |
Notre Dame
(1999) |
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DB: Why were you stationed in Germany specifically?
NG: It was Cold War days, and the Berlin Wall wasn’t even built yet. Our assignment was to prevent enemy troop advancements through the strategic Fulda Gap. The Russians had enough men and equipment in East Germany to bury us, as Khrushchev once said. We were a delaying force.
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DB: To what extent did you encounter a Europe that was still feeling the effects of WWII?
GN: There were destroyed buildings here and there in West Germany, but in East Berlin, it looked like the war just ended yesterday. It was sad and unbelievable. The Allies had helped the German people almost completely rebuild West Berlin, but in the East it was mostly bombed-out buildings. I had a strong affection for Berlin. It was a city of the arts before the war, you know. It must have been a beautiful place. |
DB: In describing View from a Hill in Germany, you mention that the foreground of the actual scene was marred by tank tracks. It's interesting that you chose to downplay the tank tracks in the painting in favor of a much more idealized landscape.
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A View from a Hill in Germany
(1996) |
GN: View From A Hill In Germany is a much quieter hill than the actual one. We radio operators had a relay station in a group of trees on top of the hill to coordinate field and command-post operations. The artillery battalion was in the valley on one side of the hill firing at targets on the other side. We could watch all this and hear the shells going over our heads. None ever hit the top of the hill, thank goodness. Then the armored personnel carriers with troops and the tanks would come up the hill simulating an attack. Yes, it was pretty much chewed up by the tanks and PCs, and I snapped several pictures. When I chose to do a painting from one of those slides, it was purely because of the sky or various shades of green in the surrounding hills and the evergreen tree in the foreground. I had no thought of depicting the scene as in a war zone.
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Interview continued...
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