Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan

Artist Ben Quilty created 'Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan' during his commission as an official war artist to Afghanistan in 2011. He initially painted from photographs he had taken in Afghanistan of solider's seated in the same pose. Quilty asked each of them to face the sun with their eyes closed, then open them and stare into the blinding light, at which point he would take the photograph. Quilty explained that, "to me, this symbolised what they're facing, something immense, overwhelming."

Upon return to Australia and after painting several portraits, Quilty was unhappy with his ability to articulate the soldiers' experiences and emotions from working with photographs, so he invited some of the soldiers to sit for him in his studio. His concept developed once they arrived, having the soldiers sit for their portraits naked. As Quilty put it, "I wanted [this soldier] to be naked, showing not only his physical strength but also the frailty of human skin and the darkness of the emotional weight of the war."

Depicted here, Trooper Daniel Westcott displays both the vigour of the fit Australian soldier and the fragility of his naked body. His slumped posture expresses his exhaustion on his return from service in Afghanistan. As Quilty explained, "In a way I wanted [them] to help me imbue my painting with the loss or the sadness or the emotion of the experience that [they'd] had."

Ben Quilty was deployed to Afghanistan in October 2011 as an official war artist, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial and attached to the Australian Defence Force. During this time he observed the Australians' activities in Kabul, Kandahar, and Tarin Kwot. His task was to record and interpret the experiences of Australian service personnel who are deployed on operations in Afghanistan under Operation Slipper. Under his contract, Quilty produced for the Memorial 5 large scale paintings, and 18 drawings made during his deployment along with hundreds of research photos. In addition to the contracted works, Quilty produced another 17 paintings in response to his commission in Afghanistan, most of which are held in his personal collection. This painting, donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program in 2017 is an important work in the Afghanistan series.