Martin Wade

MARTIN IS AVAILABLE FOR COMMISSION ABSTRACT PAINTINGS AND PRINTS, FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

CLICK HERE 

Lt. Col (Retd) Martin Wade

‘Lieutenant Colonel Retired Sept 1999-Jan 2015. ( Medical discharge due to PTSD )

A senior British Army Officer with over 15 years of service working in Europe and Asia, within different jurisdictions an areas of law. A decision maker, trusted advisor and commander providing robust, pragmatic and apposite legal advice often in the demanding of situations whilst taking into account the complexity of strategic, political and coalition interests. A modest and accountable lawyer with the mental acuity and moral courage to get the job done with the minimum of fuss working alone, as part of or leading a team.

Dedicated legal advisor to the Royal Marines at home and in Afghanistan, Senior Legal Advisor to The European Force in Bosnia, Senior Prosecutor at Court Martial. Commander Legal British Forces Germany and London District.’ 

Martin has been suffering acute PTSD since leaving the Forces. He cannot reconcile the outcomes of the decisions he had to make as only 'on the ground lawyer for 8 violent months in Helmand. which eventually  became too much to bar and he has been receiving psychiatric treatment at Bethlehem Hospital as an in and out patient for the last 6 years. As Stewart an impressive career 'stubbed out like the post  firefight cigarettes we smoked about in Afghanistan'.

Style for Soldiers has provided Martin with high quality clothing, and artistic sponsorship both through professional tuition and painting materials and will be sponsoring him for the following year to enable him to paint four or five abstract works for the Art in the Aftermath exhibition in November 2018. Painting has become vital to Martin’s management of PTSD and although he would ideally be a full time painter, he understands that financially he must also seek work as a part time lawyer. He has been short listed for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and sold all three of his paintings at Robert Hiscox’s Marlborough Gallery exhibition in 2017. Style for Soldiers hopes that the November exhibition will expose his astonishing paintings and accompanying words to much wider audience and help launch him into a career as a professional painter.

Lustful Ruminations

This painting was completed in my room during another inpatient stay at the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam).  The title of the piece comes from the practice of continually replaying images and thoughts in my mind in a forlorn hope to rewrite the past.  

Rumination is a conjuring trick of the threatened mind. It convinces you that a quantum of solace is offered and even possible. The truth is it prevents you from wholeheartedly processing the difficult emotions you struggle with in a compassionate way.  It inhibits your natural inner wisdom, undermines your strength, confuses your understanding and dampens any warmth towards yourself.  All humanity ruminate and can relate to this.

Lustful rumination is based on an interlocking 12 sided shape.  I have designed it in such a way that the shape is actually impossible in three dimensions, a trick, just like rumination.  The colour choices are deliberately lustful and reminiscent of Chanel lipsticks.  When overwhelmed with trauma and suffering it is entirely natural to ruminate about a better life.  A perfect life with the perfect partner to share it with, the perfect job to identify yourself with, money and power with no suffering.  Again an impossibility.  In fantastical rumination you can avoid life, suffering and responsibility.  This fantasy can include relationships which you have had and lost, relationships which will never happen and those that you long for but are forbidden all the while merely seeking a place of safety, intimacy and love where your desires and needs are met and your wounds healed. If this is possible in the real world it must be worth fighting for, accepting the risk of rejection, being vulnerable, finding compromise, and having faith in your own resilience.  This relationship may already be staring you in the face if only you had the wisdom and courage to see it.