There was a nightclub named Kickers in Nightsville, Tennessee. Rap, country, top 40 and electronic all under the same roof. I felt like this club was a cross section between the differences and varying different interests of particular services. But everyone would come together, there were fights, and competition between the sections of the clubs, but everyone always had fun. Groups coming together in these offshoots - fusion disco tech. Back in the sticks/barn places split up for entertainment. I wouldn't realize how different people are after hours… breaking the sense of rules and protocols. Soon as you leave base on Friday - everyone isn't the sam—when people start getting in trouble. It can also… uniformed person representing MP - everyone ran from MPs– hiding people in trunk who forgot their ID so we could get back on base.

Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain

When I went to war it was after the initial invasion (2003) when victory was declared to late 2006/2007. There was no strategy as far as what the country of Iraq was going to be. It ended up being the Surge was the strategy to inject the theater with 30K more troops to improve the security situation.-- on the brink of civil war. Civis couldn't vote. The US military figured out they could not effect change if they stayed on these big FOBs. 2 fold - thinking of alternatives about the “jobs” question / making a living - instead of living in big bases - moved to small combat outposts. Lived within the communities. First presence patrol - then started living there. Strategic application of violence with living amongst the population while also trying throwing a bunch of money at the problem. Paying the fighters in Sadar city of Alquida fighters. Inflict change to help change the problem–while also living amongst the population. Started by McMasters. Clear - Hold- Build strategy - around the combat outposts. I was there when we were just clearing holding then leaving. The Surge turns up the temperature to drown out the flames. 2007 had the most Iraq and Afghanistan casualties. Gave the space to leave- Cluster that gave a sense of stability. The US left then ISIS took over much of the area that the US occupied. Blood and treasure. GAve aid, paid for their allegiance and we became the main employer. Asking the troops to do the hardest thing. People in that painting missing limbs with suitcases of money. Second phase of resistance (1st fought after initial invasion - then ) Reestablishing the Iraqi Army as a militia. These people that we were paying not to kill Americans and shut down the insurgency. Wrote the counter-insurgency manual - patraus. Became the leader of the Iraq War.

The Surge was a tactical victory not a strategic one. Gave space for US troops to start leaving. Obama was able to declare victory for the 3rd time in Iraq. Bandaid. Daily fire fights to control territory. A lie in that victory. Cutting out the heart of the story. Talking about the casualties and the civilians. People as pons. $ train and equip our enemies to be our allies. The US army became the biggest employer. Empty promises like the whole world was. Winning with the least expenditure of resources and effort. A spectacle. Bush stopped the filming of caskets draped in flags coming home. Obama started it back up. Painting staged like a play. Surge as  a party.

They walked thorough ashes that were once their homes, towns and communities

I wanted to show the other side. So many of the panels are what the soldiers/war fighters are going through. I wanted to show the other side. Thinking about the aftermath of democracy of freedom as it burns. And people are still there as a family just walking through. A guy, his wife and kid. Somebody is pregnant. They don't have to … can't stop and turn off the tv. They keep living through a burning landscape toward something better. Symbolism of a red cat as a seminal animal/cross roads - i grew up with cats then dogs (early teens) now I have cats again. I always appreciated cats and if I was the same size it would come and kill me. It's also very loving and independant i use it a lot thinking about a dual nature or certain crossroads moment. In regards to refugees… its asking the question - how much is this hurting- how much is this helping- can a bomb help me- at what point is bombing people

Civilian on a stretcher - Red Crescent medics- where do civilians go? Would they die or just be injured, they just disappeared. I was thinking about the civilians and the Iraqi population. It started as a painting of soldiers then I turned into a civilian. I didn't really see this, but remember this as stories of other people that I met. Expended shell cases were falling on top of them but every one inside were blackened shadows on the wall “ crispy critters. I tried drawing one of these – and thinking about the ambiguity of the civilian casualties.

Gregory Rick, 2026

16×20, tempra on masonite

I wasn't married but a lot of people in my platoon were married. Thinking about the morning before deployment. Everyone comes to whether to say goodbye to their loved one. These embraces of romantic partners saying goodbye– that could be every morning- extra charged element when it is a deployment. Right before they get in the car and drive off in the car to get ready to leave until they are on lockdown– before they give up their cellphone - 20,000 of us– like the enemy wouldn't know – but had to give up our cell phones. No faces… the last moment of human contact with family before going out to do your job… tender moment between partners, lovers,,, saying goodbye. Thinking about how memories tend to abstract for some of these deployments that are super long you look like and feel like a totally different person after 18 months.

Riding on a helicopter.  A Chanook. Look to the back of the painting is a square where the horizon is on a slant. Turning with the horizon. I was 101st and I got to ride a lot. Synonymous with Iraq because that’s how we got around. When I went to the VA reminiscing with Vietnam vets and how that was a core memory of them. I hear them now - there's a whooshing still remembering. Core memories of the conflict happening in the helicopter. Some of my initiation moments – defly scared especially with RPGs or small arms- you could see the tracers out of the patrol window… It became a real possibility that I was gonna die there and it was gonna happen in my job and my job was to do my job the best I could. It was better after that- I wasn't worried about doing it everyday. There was a certain tension in the helicopter. This was game time. Medical pouches, everyone knows what they're doing - arrows showing the way out - when it becomes all about the mission - wasn't about home or fear, it was about the mission. Someone was about to throw up and threaten him not to throw up on the machine gun cus we would all have to clean that. Laughing to release tension. Also a moment of reckoning on how I changed- on one mission they shot the enemy and Rick and Schwartz are gonna escort this person to get medical treatment so we could interrogate him. A friend stuck his barrel in these gunshot wounds and the guy was screaming. I grinned and I remember thinking this is probably a war crime– and then I went to sleep. Sleeping in shifts, I woke up with the crew chief and pilot waking me up - winding how I fell asleep through the screaming. I realized I had a hardness of the shell. I was indifferent.

I was thinking about these liminal spaces. The spaces and places in between.  I remember the anticipation and the ease between. Everybody's charged up, recalibrating their rifle optics, bore and dime drill (adding to muscle memory) close combat optic to match your iron sites. Checking your pouches. In a battle ready stance.Tent on the right - balloon popped. A different anticipation of waiting that we never trained for. Replace with happiness of leaving and anticipation of what’s waiting at home. Laughing again. Out of nerves. Put it to the side. Sharp vs rigid. A weird experience. Crying in both tents makes more sense on the left and still on the right your crying coming home to your family and don’t know how to talk about experience or how to integrate your feelings into this new reality. I get why some people didn’t want to leave. More would admit that they would rather stay, cuz it’s easy. Regimented.

Motor Pool or Air Traffic Control was the center of FOB, but the Motor T was always busy. What you can't see is the Motor pool was the only place where female soldiers were - (when he was in) interesting because it never stopped 24-7. Others had cycles of life depending on day or night missions - second, there were ladies working in the motor pool which was different most crucial where the amount of wrecked vehicles outside the motor t had. The amount of work that was happening to make these vehicles ready or safe…. Welding plated armor weighed with sandbags—improvising in the beginning- then sent Ikea like assembly kits – until we got an up-armored vehicle. You can tell where the bomb hit. Back half unscathed but back half demolished. Going past the motor pool before going outside the wire. Someone killed themselves and they removed the whole Conex… vehicles were stacked up. applaud the people that were working in the mortar pool in these hard conditions. Intake constantly filled with sand. Ac blasting and breaking coolant.

Abu Ghraib became a recruitment center. Abu Zakari became terrorist #1 - offering more for Zarkawi than Bin Laden. He's waiting for them behind the bars - everyone outside waiting for him. This was less about torture - and this place becoming this US funded school and epicenter of resentment of the invasion and occupation. Lots of hatred because of so many torture there. Extreme Hubris. That we were shooting lots of far off training camps in far off places in the world - when we were setting up this Harvard University of terrorists.

The news attempted to get civilians as close to the violence as possible but in the process lost its objectivity and forfeited its ability to strive towards the truth. The embedding of the reporters with the military to the point where they were part of the rifle team. Embedded with 25th inventory in the JOF, not the reporter anymore and starts shouting orders. They got too close. Starts yelling out orders during an ambush and becomes a platoon infantry officer again after 30/40 years after Nam. Keeping the media machine going to buttress the war. Until the public soured to the war.

Gregory Rick, 2026

16×20, tempra on masonite

A great sadness and the tragedy of a country asking people to fight a war and not having a place for them when they come back. Not every one want so be a cop. No one wants soldiers out there who are trained to kill people, cover them in glory, wrap them in a flag and leave them to their own devices. And they fall through the crack. I'm trying to show it in this painting. Are the symbols. The guy with the sign and the attitude of the people in the cars. Want to give money, some are laughing, some are mad about it. Lifts the facade or veil of exceptionalism. For them to be flying a sign. The benevolent nature of our nation. They shouldn't be any beggars - they should. They don’t have a place. A lot of the time is because they are still there. Half of them are overseas and half are back home. Nothing can replace or fix what they lost. Too rigid of a system. One Way sign because of the rigidity. A zero sum game that if your can fit in you fall through. How do we treat our veterans beyond them being a symbol? How do we recognize their individuality and how/when they became the flag? Fighting to protect the place that never existed. It becomes evident when you see people on the street. The system is so rigid. No room for flaws, no room for self criticism. Flying another sign in the background “Seeking human kindness”. Beyond the military. A kinship between the poor and … you don't have to be in the army to fail this rigid system. Connection between civilians struggling and people in the military struggling. Social economic conditions. Upward mobility. No feet because he’s not standing on his own. Because maybe themselves or other bigger things are out of their control. Shows the complex reality.

Together, Right or Wrong

I blacked out in a fight. It was scary to me because it had never happened before. I’ve been in a lot of fights. Lost a lot of fights too. This was scary because my body was working like a machine without my authorization. I don't ever want to be the one waking up with a bloody knife. This was a time it felt like it could. One second I remember my buddy's bottle flying through the air and smashing. In this moment of violence, I felt protected because we had each other.

I don’t know who started it. Just know that it was fragments of images. 

I think of how surprised I was about who jumped in. Never thought they would have my back, but they had my back. Cocoon of protection. Walking aimlessly when the cops show up. Friends waiting in the cal, laughing. Scary recognition between automatic and the consequences of extreme violence.

Rush [Limbaugh] got the Medal of Freedom before he died. I was thinking about how this development of talk radio has really put up divisions for me and the people I served with and the country as a whole. This is one of paintings of what was happening about war while we were there. These sensational - over the top theatrics - Rush was famous for - a real force of separation of the American populace. A lot of my former battle buddies are disconnected - something between us and that something is politics. It's unfortunate. These people we never knew separated us. Intersperse things going on in the homefront with the things that were going on in the war. Protest, talk radio, mortgage crisis… things shaping the homefront while we were off on our own shaping the mission of the country. On his desk are the Turner Diaries - White supremacist - Tim McVay used to hand it out at gun shows. A glimpse of what the country would become later. Thinking about that book on his desk he quoted it as being a very good book - almost a true story. Championing these ideas. Also in the painting there are also newspapers in the garbage like the New York Times. For me they were beyond reproach, they were reliable and made corrections when they made mistakes. But they were also grabbing power.

I remember vividly in Gulf War one as an elementary school student seeing a protest sign stating “no blood for oil!’ And that being an underlying thought I had during the short and long duration of that conflict. During OIF, protest became the norm and not as disarming as the first protest sign I noticed but rather became the companion to the conflict. As the protest grew a certain sense of unity around hope for change became more clear and things seemed possible. The protest and the quashing of said protest, the performative wrapping of the nation in the flag. And the celebration violence as removed (videogameesque) righteous and all too natural, became the cadence of the war. The protest simultaneously incited both dread and hope. While the celebration and normalization of removed violence brought us closer to explosion while totally extinguishing the suffering that followed the shock and the awe.