'Barbed Wire Kisses' is a nightmare I had, perhaps this painting does not look like your nightmares but we all experience fear in different ways.
When I was a young soldier I was posted to South Armagh in Ulster. I was a chef and two of us fed about 50 soldiers in the base. We worked day on-day off. On a day off I would often go out on patrol with whichever 'brick' would give up a place.
Some patrols were over beautiful countryside and we crossed many fence-lines, some with barbed wire. Running up to the fence one at time and leaping over it, or vaulting with one hand on the wire... Sometimes catching the barb as I went, my hand would bleed for a while afterwards. Those patrols were literally a walk in the countryside back then, later in life they were dances with death and would sometimes wake me from a deep sleep, in a panic.
