Shared Experience: Art and War

Potato Peelers

Leonard Brooks
Potato Peelers
egg tempera on paper
32.7 x 38.4cm
CWM 19710261-1147

In a 1995 interview, Brooks reflected on this painting

Sailors are sitting next to a couple of cans of gasoline in their life jackets while the convoy goes by. They were busy all the time between that kind of thing and action stations. There was never a dull moment, when they weren’t on watch, or peeling potatoes, or doing something ... They could be sunk in one moment, or blown up, or hit a mine.

Nonetheless, he added: “A lot of the action that won the war was action like this.”