Artist Traces Father’s Steps Through World War II

After discovering a collection of his father’s dramatic World War ll letters at his home, artist Robert Reynolds set off on a physical and emotional journey to stand on the ground where his father fought and bled while serving in the South Pacific nearly 75 years ago.

A new exhibit, ​“1944: New Work by Robert Reynolds,” at Robert Reynolds Fine Art on Orange Street, features some 20 works, primarily abstract oil paintings, with some mixed media and a collection of six dry-point etchings. The work was completed in the artist’s Branford studio after he returned from the Philippines and New Guinea, where he traced his father’s military movements and combat experiences with the aid of his father’s military field maps and narrative accounts. Reynolds said that additional research he did through the Pritzker Military Museum and Library corroborated the detailed narratives of his father’s recently discovered letters.

The exhibit runs through Aug. 31.

“1944” is Reynolds’s first since losing sight in one eye after an unusual medical incident. If his vision remains partially clouded, Reynold’s intent and motivations in creating this latest series are not. Reynolds said his layered and highly textural paintings represent his abstract impressions of memories, history and the places where his father once stood and fought, though the artist said he was not trying to depict recognizable places or objects. The symbolic works are represented through a rich vocabulary of mark making. Scumbling technique, spatters, drips and gestural brushwork combine with some formal elements of map symbology, but even those are pared down to their most impressionistic essence.

Six etchings in the exhibit were created using a hand-fashioned etching stylus Reynolds said he created from his father’s carpentry tools. Reynolds said that artistically, drawing was his first love, but he has also had a long-time interest in printmaking. The black and white images, created with his own studio press, are fairly minimalist. Images are primarily linear and evoke strategic military field maps and symbols.

Alongside the art works are small black and white photos depicting soldiers in foxholes or soldiers relaxing during some downtime. Most compelling are the actual narratives written by PFC Specialist Marksman (21st Infantry) Chris Reynolds, and some memoir passages that have been transcribed by a friend of the family.

In one narrative, Private Reynolds describes a scene at Breakneck Ridge, one of the toughest battles in the war, where he was on a rescue mission to retrieve wounded soldiers when Japanese soldiers opened fire: ​“The [Japanese] machine guns had a very different sound, it was distinctive, It was slower; dat,dat,dat,dat. The American machine guns went daddddddd, twice as fast.”

Several other harrowing combat scenes are described in other passages, along with a memorable encounter with General Douglas MacArthur: ​“We moved fast and got to the beach and were surprised that there were several anti-aircraft guns set up in a 100 foot circle and that we had to take guard positions on the edge of the beach. We were set up about 15 minutes when I saw 3 landing rafts coming directly our way. The boat stopped in about 2 feet of water and out pops General MacArthur surrounded by a bunch of brass (officers).… He was an imposing guy. Brass all over his cap and a corncob pipe in his mouth.”

One photograph of PFC Reynolds in uniform is accompanied by a Western Union telegraph informing his mother, Esther Reynolds, that, ​“your son has been seriously wounded in action on Leyte.”

In addition to being wounded in combat, a shot through the hip, PFC Reynolds would experience potentially life-threatening simultaneous bouts of malaria and dengue fever, according to Reynolds. Though he survived severe illness and wounding during his military career, Private Reynolds’s life as a civilian was not without issues. ​“He had terrible PTSD,” said Reynolds, describing an incident during a Fourth of July parade when a loud firecracker exploded near his father. The senior Reynolds immediately jumped into a defensive position on the ground as if he were holding a rifle. Nightmares, in which he relived battlefield experiences, were commonplace.

After some adjustment, the elder Reynolds would go on to have a career as a professional photographer with a business on Chapel Street for many years, located just around the corner from Reynolds’s current gallery. He passed away six years ago at the age of 86.

Reynolds said that when growing up, he often heard sanitized versions of his father’s military stories. It was not until his thirties that his father began to share unexpurgated accounts that were closer to the letters Reynolds would eventually find — stories that included acts of heroism, constant fear, and great human loss.

During his trip to the World War II South Pacific theater, Reynolds found great inspiration in ​“the raw beauty of the landscape and the rich culture of the people” as he climbed challenging terrain and retraced the military tour of his late father, then a young soldier in his early twenties. ​“It is hard to describe standing there, on a gorgeous windswept mountaintop in Leyte, knowing that my father’s unit had a 48 percent casualty rate,” said Reynolds.

The art in this exhibit, not unlike Reynolds’s bittersweet experiences in visiting locations where his father fought decades earlier, has a physical presence and beauty rooted in the agonizing experience of war, the sense of place and memory — context that lends great emotional weight to the artist’s creative distillations.

Robert Reynolds Fine Art is located at 96 Orange Street. ​“1944” runs through August 31. Contact the gallery for details.