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Royal Canadian Legion  Ontario : Branch 50 - FRED GIES, Kitchener.  |
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News - All - 23 Jan 2010News Item 74 of 1575
Branch News: 23 Jan 2010
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CAMBRIDGE — They gave their lives for Canada. Artist Dave Sopha is honouring their sacrifice by doing what he does best.
They gave their lives for Canada. Artist Dave Sopha is honouring their sacrifice by doing what he does best. He’s painting portraits of all the Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.
“The sacrifices that these kids make, wow,” he said. “It’s very emotional for me.”
Sopha calls his work Portraits of Honour. It’s a mural 15 metres wide that will feature at least 133 faces, based on casualties to date. He’s completed about 90 portraits.
He’s painting portraits of all the Canadian soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.
Every face he adds to the canvas takes at least three days to perfect. The portraits, many featuring big smiles, are slightly larger than life. He paints them using photographs supplied by the military or by their families.
“We were absolutely overwhelmed,” Carolyn Wilson said after seeing the portrait of her son, Mark Wilson. “His artwork is stupendous.”
Trooper Wilson was killed by a roadside bomb in October 2006. He was 39 years old, the 40th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.
His mother travelled from her London home to see her son’s portrait. She brought her grandson Ben, now 14. He was drawn right away to the face of his dead father.
“Our biggest fear would be that people would forget these fellows,” Carolyn Wilson said. “Every time a project like this is taken on, it just reaffirms our faith in Canadians.”
Sopha, 61, is a professional airbrush artist whose work has decorated buses, motorcycles, vans, walls and other spaces. In a career spanning decades, he has painted just about anything that can be painted. This is his first oil-on-canvas piece.
He was inspired after The Record published portraits of the first 100 war dead. “I just went ‘Oh my God. That is what I want to do.’ ”
Sopha is painting the portraits on his own time. He hopes to take the piece on a national tour in 2011 when the military mission is planned to end.
The idea is to mount the canvas in a special tractor-trailer, designed to haul it and display it. The tour would help raise funds for families of the fallen.
Harry Watts, 86, sees grit and compassion in the portraits. Watts fought in Italy and Holland in the Second World War and is a friend of the artist.
“I get goose bumps just looking at it,” Watts said. “Their eyes tell you a wonderful story. This will be quite a tribute.”
Sopha has deep family connections to the military. His grandparents fought in the First World War. His father fought in the Second World War. His nephew is in the military and has completed three tours in Afghanistan.
He admits to mixed emotions, at first, about why Canada is fighting to rebuild a faraway nation that provided sanctuary to the 9/11 terrorists. But after talking to soldiers and their families, “I know what they’re doing is right.”
The Kinsmen, a national service club, is providing Sopha with studio space in Cambridge, and is planning to support a tour of the portraits. Sopha is a longtime member of the club and was a friend of the late Kinsmen founder Hal Rogers, a veteran of the First World War.
The club is deeply concerned about Afghanistan casualties and “the fallout for the families that are left behind,” said Ed Wynette, past president of the Preston Kinsmen Club.
Sopha hopes to complete his work by next summer but intends to keep adding portraits if casualties continue into 2011. He figures he has enough canvas for 200 war dead. “Let’s hope I never go that far,” he said.
Jeff Outhit/The Record
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