Aftermath exhibition in Exeter. Q&A with artist John McDermott

John McDermott put a scholarship to Glasgow School of Art behind him to join the Royal Navy, where he stayed for 28 years. The Aftermath exhibition, featuring his and Raya Herzig’s works, investigates the conflict of trauma while celebrating the strength of human spirit and promoting the issues surrounding PST in the forces. We caught up with John for an Arts+Culture Q&A…

People may consider the combination of being a military man and an artist as an odd mix – how did you and your colleagues in the Royal Navy view your artist side, and did you get a chance to continue your work while in military service?
Yes, on the face of it – it doesn’t seem to be the norm, but then again, the armed forces are comprised of everyone and anyone from British society all of them individuals and all them preserving some rudiments of their own essential creative capacity. So, in many ways I was no different from anyone else and never really seen myself as being different while in uniform. Put it this way: I know artists who wear suits, work in offices, while pursuing their own creative need.

I managed to carry on my painting throughout my whole naval career, an aspect not lost on some senior officers, who would support my exhibitions and occasionally commission me to do representational work depicting naval life.

How has your art work allowed you to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and how do you see your work helping other people?
My work changed quite dramatically back in the 90s because of all the accumulated conflict experiences I had been through. Before then I had, what you might call, ‘a developing representational painterly approach’. This quite unfulfilling approach was easily discarded when I started to use art to naturally describe how I felt, using it, if you like, as language to express deeply held feelings that I found incredibly difficult to speak about.

In 2007 I was invited by the Falkland Islands Government to hold an exhibition of this type of work. I took 20 paintings 8,000 miles south to the Falkland Islands, gut wrenchingly, not knowing how they would be received. However, I soon found the work was emotionally engaging many others who had also been through traumatic conflict experiences.

Perhaps this personally expressed visual background was telling other sufferers that were not alone with their pain and creating a positive unity, where words alone are never enough. I’ve carried on since then doing this visual art work as I feel it helps me, and in turn, helps others.

I’ve also had the privilege of encouraging other PTSD sufferers to paint. Some have found that it does help, others, like me, have found it to be liberating. You see, PTSD is a hugely subjective experience and so is painting. Many personal truths can be found when a painting is finally resolved.

You say ultimately the exhibition is uplifting. How have you managed to convey that through your work?
Those coming to the exhibition will experience the personal testimonies of survival of the human spirit; doing so hopefully, through my own work, and most certainly through the celebrated works of Raya Herzig – a child survivor from the horrors of the WWII German camps in Poland. There is a ‘flow of life’ in the works being displayed that everyone can engage with. As Raya said to me, “I paint not because of Hitler, but despite him”.

What is the role of art? Is it as a campaigning tool, a cathartic exercise or to enlighten the viewer?
I think the general view of art today is a very poor one due to the mind boggling insistence of making it ‘exclusive’ and somewhat ‘elitist’ by those few who wish to make loads of money out of it. Art, to my mind, is never been about that at all. Art is for everyone and never the preserve the few. People are not stupid. We can all see pretentiousness within the nonsense of celebrity art, which is usually dressed up as something ‘oh so aesthetic’. Sincere works of art, on the other hand, has been with us throughout our known history. These, in my own opinion, are works that embody the truer nature of the human spirit and the truer nature of the world we live in and tend to remain memorable throughout our lives. The viewer, therefore, is always the best judge and needs no added enlightenment.

Is there anything you’d like to add?
Please come along the exhibition at Exeter Castle between Friday, June 25 and Sunday, July 4 and find out more by visiting the website: www.aftermathptsd.co.uk.

• Check out the rest of our Aftermath stories on Arts+Culture