100 Voices from the Little Bighorn by Bruce Brown Deluxe CD-ROM Bundle Edition
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"The Summer Before The War" by Bruce Brown

Sketchbook:
The Summer Before The War #3

Digital paintings by Bruce Brown


"The Valley Below, September 12, 2002" by Bruce Brown, from "The Summer Before The War" (2002)

The Valley Below (thanks to Terri Bumford)
September 12, 2002


Artist's Note: I created "The Summer Before The War" series during the summer of 2002, when it became apparent that George W. Bush was "hell bent" on war with Iraq.

As I travelled through America that summer and fall, I was frequently struck by the almost etherial, out-of-time beauty that I encountered from the shores of the Pacific to the high mountains of the West. It was as if there was a rare, quivering poignancy in the air as America's mass media and its dumb-think President were beating the drums of war up to a frenzied pitch. (On the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, supposedly independent, non-corporate NPR actually claimed Saddam Hussein drank human blood.)

At the time, it made me think of stories I'd heard from my parents of the summer of 1942 -- and seen depicted in the film The Summer of '42 -- a halcyon, almost innocent time before the world changed forever. So here's a look back at America as it was in the summer of 2002, "The Summer Before The War."

* * *

The images in this series began as photographs, were rendered with a combination of artistic brushes in Photoshop 5, and finally hand painted with a Wacom Intuos stylus.

-- Bruce Brown
July 4, 2008

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"The Summer Before The War" © Copyright 2002 by Bruce Brown
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