Night vision studies vii

This painting is a study of the effects of using night vision goggles, made in response to the artist's experience as an official war artist in Timor-Leste. Night vision goggles cut off the wearer’s peripheral field, which can create a sense of unease, the suspicion that something is about to happen just outside one’s field of vision. The paintings in this series are imbued with notions of anxiety and surveillance, and evoke in the viewer feelings of voyeurism and invasion of privacy. The soldiers here are both the observers and the observed. And there is a surreal quality to their experience of an unfamiliar land, heightened by the use of lush greens and luminous figures. This hints at the complex problems faced by peacekeepers as they try to communicate with people and integrate into their surroundings.