When artist Eileen Kelly began thinking about how to honor veterans through her paintings, she went to veterans themselves with a question: What kind of art would honor their experience?
One veteran’s answer gave her a starting point. The hope of coming home — of seeing the people left behind — had helped sustain them during war.
That idea became Coming Home: A Visual Story to Honor All Veterans, an exhibit now on display at the Riverhead library throughout November. Featuring watercolors by Kelly and illustrations by Vietnam War veteran and retired professional illustrator Bob Rouge, the show explores wartime memories, homecomings and the emotional journey from military service to civilian life.
Kelly began working on the show about four months ago, she said at the opening reception Saturday afternoon. She asked veterans she knew for photographs of their homecomings, then used the images as the basis for watercolors.
Kelly said “my goal was to start doing watercolors of these photos for them in honor of them and in honor of all veterans.”
As the project developed, she began considering what else belonged in the story of coming home. She thought of Rouge, and learned from his wife, Bernice, how difficult his own return had been.
Bernice brought some of her husband’s illustrations to Kelly, who wanted to include them in the exhibit. Although Bernice had asked his permission to share the work, the public exhibit and Saturday’s reception was still a surprise for him.
Asked how it felt to see his illustrations on display, Rouge answered: “Very good. Very good. Gratifying.”
Rouge served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969 as an Army sergeant. He said he was thinking about his time there when he made four of the illustrations on display as part of the exhibit.
The work “brings back memories, good ones, bad ones, both,” he said.
The four works represent his progression of emotion about his deployment. The first, representing his early days in Vietnam, is bright, executed in a panoply of colors. The illustrations grow darker and more somber, representing time spent fighting in the jungle, with the fourth work in all-black ink depicting soldiers in silhouette, running toward and boarding a helicopter that hovers a few feet off the ground.
Rouge, 79, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease as a result of Agent Orange exposure, attended the reception in a wheelchair.
An exhibit honoring veterans returning home from Vietnam has special meaning for him and all veterans of that war, Rouge said, because of the way returning veterans were treated when they came home following their deployment. Rouge recalled arriving at the airport in San Francisco to the jeers and shouts of protesters “who spit at us and called us baby killers.” He choked up as he spoke the words. Wiping away a tear, he said, “It was very hard.”
His illustrations comprise Impressions of War, part one of the new exhibit. Additional works include an illustration he made for the Queens Veterans Center — Rouge is a former resident of Queens — and a drawing of the 9/11 Memorial Park on Sound Avenue in Riverhead, at the corner of the road leading to Reeves Park. Kelly’s husband Bob and his family were instrumental in saving that corner from commercial development in favor of public acquisition for the memorial park. Bob Kelly’s younger brother, Tommy, was one of 343 New York City firefighters killed in the terror attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Rouge himself is the subject of one of Kelly’s watercolors. It is based on a poignant photograph of Rouge at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a place he had waited many years before feeling ready to visit.
Bernice Rouge supplied Kelly with the photograph, taken by her cousin. She recalled on Saturday that she and her husband spent the whole day at the memorial, looking up the names of his buddies and meeting other visitors to the memorial.
Kelly has a direct connection with nearly all of the subjects of her Coming Home paintings, which makes the exhibit uniquely personal. The soldiers and sailors returning home in the paintings are friends, neighbors, former neighbors and, in one case, a close relative. She collected photos from them or their family members and based her paintings on the photos.
Two of her homecoming watercolors depict her brother’s son, Larry Elgin, who enlisted in the service in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. He was close to her brother-in-law, whom he called Uncle Tom. “He was very upset by the attacks,” Kelly said. One painting shows her nephew coming home from boot camp. The other is from a photo of Elgin making a rubbing of Tommy Kelly’s name engraved in a 9/11 memorial.
“If I’m not personally connected, it would be very hard for me to do a portrait because, for me to do a portrait, I need to feel the emotion of what I’m portraying,” Kelly said.
Several of her subjects, in addition to Rouge, attended Saturday’s reception and shared the stories of the circumstances behind the paintings.
The third part of the exhibit, Emotional Transition, turns to Kelly’s watercolors of skies and sunsets. Turbulent skies give way to calmer, peaceful light, representing the emotions veterans may experience as they adjust to civilian life.
“I figured the emotions of the sky could actually represent the emotions of transitioning that people have to go through in order to reassimilate into society” after military service in wartime,” Kelly said. “So you’ll see the tumultuous skies into the calm, peaceful skies.”
For Kelly, the project became a labor of love and an opportunity to use her art in appreciation of veterans’ service.
A former educator who taught AP computer science and calculus at the high school and college levels on Long Island for nearly three decades, Kelly began developing her art more fully after retiring from teaching in 2021. She maintains a studio in Baiting Hollow.
In her written statement accompanying the exhibit, Kelly addresses veterans directly.
“Please know that your service is remembered, your sacrifice is respected, and you are deeply appreciated.”
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl and Denise Civiletti
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