Summary Of The Painting 'Wailing Women'

Wailing Women, created by Ken Currie is a large-scale painting that attempts to capture the emotional trauma of war (figure 1). Currently located at the McMaster Art Gallery, this oil painting successfully conveys large-scale loss of human life through its expressionistic style. Currie’s choice of style allows for the figures to be more distorted and symbolic, making the piece more visually appealing. Rather than merely present the event to the viewer in an art form, the Currie creates an emotional experience.
Here we see a dark, asymmetrical piece that seems to be referencing the First or Second World War. The painting has been composed on a horizontally orientated canvas and moves left to right. Beginning with an assumed deceased, young, blindfolded man in uniform, a woman carries the man on a stretcher, toward the horde of women. The women are either holding photos of the young man and pointing toward the sky or holding open wounds on their bodies in an attempt to literally hold
Measuring at the viewer cannot help but feel as though the wailing women are surrounding them. Currie uses a diagonal line in the form of a stretcher at the bottom left corner, to help direct the viewers’ eyes to the centre of the painting. In the middle of the picture, there is wailing women in a yellow dress, black cloak and is holding a photo who closely resembles the man on the stretcher, while pointing to the skies. Against the dark cloak the soft, pale yellow stands out and helps to emphasise the darkness of the scene by giving the viewer a sense of the brightness that once was. Colours such as pale yellow and light blue (which is used in the dress to the right of the women in the centre) are often associated with youth. In incorporating this hint of colour, Currie reminds the viewer of the humanistic aspect of war, by using colours of childhood lost amongst the dark colours of