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An explosive conflict, as seen through
the eyes of a war artist. Bagdad Journal is the outstanding
culmination of four voyages to war-torn Iraq by artist Steve
Mumford. In the long tradition of war artists, particularly
Winslow Homer’s work for Harper’s Magazine,
Mumford meticulously documents the everyday scenes of Iraq
in bold, breathtaking watercolors and drawings and paints
a human side of the war that can be lost in the immediacy
of photographic and broadcast images.
Not overtly political, Bagdad Journal
presents portraits of life from all sides of the polarizing
conflict. With sketch pad and notebook in hand, Mumford illuminates
the routine activities of a nation in turmoil—from the
individual soldiers of American platoons to Baghdad residents
going about their daily lives amid the chaos surrounding them.
Steve Mumford is an artist living
and working in New York City, where his work is represented
by Postmasters Gallery.
He recently returned from his fourth trip
to Iraq, where he spent some 10 1/2 months drawing. He was
embedded with numerous units in the US army, and also spent
time with Iraqis, particularly in Baghdad, where he got to
know many young artists. Through drawing Mumford hoped to
depict the day-to-day experience of the war zone, both from
the point of view of the soldiers and the Iraqis he got to
know. Using a small satellite dish, he sent jpegs of his drawings,
along with written reports of his experiences to the online
magazine, artnet.com.
Previous to the Iraq project, Mumford’s
oil paintings depicted dramatic scenes of the conflict between
people and the natural world, which were often inspired by
his travels to remote places in the US and abroad, including
Peru, Costa Rica, and Newfoundland. At 19, he spent a year
traveling throughout the Amazon, recording what he saw in
drawings and watercolors.
An avid diver, Mumford has often depicted
underwater scenes in his paintings, which have sometimes addressed
the over-exploitation of resources through destructive practices
like shark-finning. His works have been shown in one-person
and group exhibitions in many places in the US and Europe,
including Tricia Collins Contemporary Art in New York, the
Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, the University of Akron in Ohio,
the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Victoria Miro
Gallery in London, and Marella Arte Contemporanea in Milan.
Mumford was born in Boston in 1960, and
returned there to study at the Boston Museum School, where
he studied with the Abstract Expressionist Freidel Dzubas
and received a BFA. He received an MFA from the School of
Visual Arts in New York City.
Mumford has taught at the Cooper Union
School of Art, The School of Visual Arts, and Montclair State
University. He was also a regular contributor to Review
Magazine, for which he wrote art criticism.
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