'It still hasn't sunk in'

For Rob Douma, it was never about winning. It was always about telling their stories.

The former soldier and now Townsville-based artist is the winner of the Australian War Memorial’s $10,000 inaugural Napier Waller Art Prize, the first national art prize offered exclusively to servicemen and servicewomen.

“It still hasn’t really sunk in fully,” Douma said. “It means a hell of a lot, and it’s something I’m still processing right now.”

Douma’s piece – Green on Blue: The betrayal of trust – was selected from a short list of 35 works and was created in response to an incident in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.

On 29 October 2011, an Afghan soldier calmly began firing his machine-gun at 12 Australian soldiers who had been tasked with mentoring him. In betraying their trust, he killed three Australians and an Afghan interpreter, and wounded nine more.

Douma’s friend and former colleague, Sergeant Robert Althofer, was shot in the leg that day.

“When I heard his story about how he’d been shot in one of these ‘Green on Blue’ attacks, and subsequently survived, I knew there was just something – a story – that I wanted to tell through art,” Douma said.

“It wasn’t until I met up with him again, and I realised he’d made a full recovery, both mentally and physically, that I knew that he was in a good place for me to make a work of art… At the same time, I found this work by Caravaggio, The Betrayal of Christ, and when I saw that work, I knew that was the angle that I wanted to pursue … to invoke the treachery and complexity of these attacks.”

The idea for the work had been “bubbling away for a number of years” when Douma heard about the Napier Waller Art Prize and decided it was the “perfect platform” for him to be able to tell his friend’s story.

“I think art can be incredibly important and powerful,” Douma said.

“A lot of my artwork has been about telling stories, whether it’s mine or others’.  It’s  given me a voice and a vehicle to talk about all the experiences I had in my own decade in the military, and my own years in Afghanistan. But at the same time I ... maybe find it easier to tell other people’s stories first, so at the moment, that’s my priority.”

Douma has been telling stories through his art since he was a child.

“As long as I can remember I’ve always been fairly creative, and drawing and painting were always things I did,” he said. “My mum’s still got a pillowcase I designed with little army men all over it … and tanks and stuff, but I’ve always done a bit of drawing.

“I was someone who has always been an artist, but I always felt this uncontrollable urge to be in the military. I just knew that it was something that I would do.

“I joined up at 17 … and before I knew it, I’d done three years full-time service with the Army Reserve … and then I just enlisted full-time.

“I had this burning desire to join the infantry, and that was it for me.  When I passed recruiting they said, ‘If you actually want to join infantry, you will have to wait nine months, unless you leave in four days’ time.’ So in four days’ time, I left, and ended up spending about 10 years in total in the military.”

Douma was deployed to East Timor twice and left the army in 2004. He went on to work in mine rescues, and became a security consultant in Afghanistan, running a close protection team for about four years. It was in 2011 that a friend suggested he look for work on oil rigs, a job that would allow him six months of the year to concentrate on his art.

“It was time to go back to art, so I took the opportunity with both hands and spent the next couple of years working on my art practice.”

Today, Douma is also a tattoo artist, and is just six weeks from completing an arts degree through the University of Canberra.

As part of the art prize, his work – Green on Blue: The betrayal of trust – will be added into the National Collection and he will also receive a two-week research residency in the Art Section of the Memorial and a mentoring day with artist Ben Quilty.

“For me it was never about the money,” he said.

“It’s just an honour to be involved at this level and to have the opportunity to create a work that is potentially going to touch many people. A lot of people are going to see it, and start understanding the story behind it, and by proxy, our story as contemporary veterans.”

The work means a lot to him personally.  “It does,” he said quietly. “I’ve visualised this painting for three years, maybe more, and when the award was announced at the start of the year, I just thought, ‘That’s it, this is the time to create this artwork that has been bubbling away.’”

He approached his friend to make sure he was okay with the idea, before taking reference photographs and completing a digital mock-up of the work.

“I went onto the barracks and got him, and a few other soldiers, and posed them in location … as reference, and he was part of that process. But I didn’t show him [the finished work] until it was 30 minutes from going to Canberra, and I was a bit worried – Is he going to like it, not like it? So when he first saw it, he smiled, but he was quite nervous, and almost embarrassed.

“I think he was embarrassed because he didn’t feel he deserved to be put on this pedestal and to be represented in this artwork, which he was humbled by. And in turn so was I … because I’m the one who was humbled because I have friends like that – of that calibre – and they allow me to tell their stories.”

Rob Douma’s work, Green on Blue: The betrayal of trust, is now on display in Anzac Hall’s mezzanine area as part of the Napier Waller Prize Art Prize exhibition. The exhibition features the 12 highly commended works and runs until 25 November 2018.  Voting for the Napier Waller People’s Choice Award closes on 25 November. The 35 shortlisted works can be viewed here.