Pulitzer Center Update October 29, 2024
A Lesson in Hope: How a British Illustrator Paints the Current War in Ukraine
Country:
Project
Divided Families of War
This project is about families divided by war. The work will be done in ink and, most importantly...
This article was originally written for The Davidsonian, the student-led newspaper of Campus Consortium partner Davidson College.
On Tuesday, October 15th, the Dean Rusk International Studies Program and the Pulitzer Center co-hosted award-winning illustrator George Butler and Davidson graduate Dr. Lauren Van Metre ‘84 for a lecture titled: ‘Hope Behind the Headlines – Why Now Is Not the Time To Forget Ukraine.’ John and Ruth McGee Director of the Dean Rusk International Studies Program Dr. Jane Mangan moderated the discussion.
Dr. Van Metre, the director of Peace, Climate, and Democratic Resilience at the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan, and non-governmental organization that works to strengthen and safeguard democracy, provided a macro perspective and detailed policy answers on the Russia-Ukraine War. Butler provided individual, micro examples and anecdotal stories that he experienced during his time in Ukraine, with his illustrations serving as the backdrop for the conversation. His drawings are collected in his new book: Ukraine: Remember Also Me.
Early in the lecture, Butler briefly explained his creative process. “I work [...] on a drawing board in a very analog, old-fashioned dip pen and ink, [which] hopefully offers an alternative to some of the news that we absorb on our phones.” His illustrations are done on-site. There is a lot of empty white space in his works, providing a contrast to the drawings and allowing the viewer to focus on the subject matter. Parts of the pen and ink illustrations are often painted over with watercolor, giving Butler’s work a beautiful pop.
Later in the lecture, Butler went more in depth detailing his process and sentiments toward his human subjects. “[It’s very] personal. It’s deliberately slow. I get a chance to sit opposite somebody, and whilst I’m drawing, we have a conversation about what’s been going on.” When he’s doing a portrait of someone, Butler expressed that he gets nervous over whether they’ll like it or if they’ll be offended. “But [...] I feel real responsibility, especially when they start talking about their stories, to do [what I do]. [...] Drawing allows for a kind of intimacy that I think you don’t always get on the front pages.”
Butler’s perspective incorporates bits and pieces of Ukraine’s civil society, but Dr. Van Metre balances his more individualistic angle by looking at the overall structure, something not overtly evident in Butler’s work. In response to a question about what stood out to her regarding Ukraine’s response to full Russian invasion, Dr. Van Metre said, “Ukraine civil society is an amazing phenomenon [...] I call it surge capacity. It’s very movement-based. So what happens is [if] they see an issue in society that needs to be fixed, [...] they will quickly pivot and mobilize and resolve the issue.” Dr. Van Metre is consistently impressed with Ukraine’s societal response and the role civilians play in it. “Ukrainian civil society is no longer doing democracy rights work. It’s no longer doing rule of law work [...] [Civilians] are now delivering medical supplies. They are taking care of veterans. They are building drones,” Dr. Van Metre exclaimed.
Unfortunately, despite a motivated citizenry, Ukrainian families are still being torn apart. “Some people are allowed to leave, some people have to stay,” Butler explained. “Men [that are of] fighting age have to stay, unless they’ve got three children under eighteen [or have] a medical condition. So in one sense, you’ve got an immediate divide.”
Other complications arise too. With large swaths of the Ukrainian population living apart from each other, often in different countries, Butler recounted that a woman told him that many of her friends were getting divorced because their husbands were away at war and they were simply living different lives. “And so [this woman] made this remarkable decision to return to where [her husband was living] so that they could be together, even at the risk of them both not making it, just so that their marriage would survive.”
The nature of Butler’s work opens him up to these types of emotional conversations, and his personal stories brought a degree of humanization to a war that is so often devoid of it. What hasn’t been lost is a sense of hope among the Ukrainian people. “[Hope] is carried in them, and it was passed on to me [through their] stories,” Butler reflected. “Hope [is the] whole reason for living at all.”
