“All’s Fair in Love and War”
This proverb is probably one of the most well known phrases in the human lexicon. When it comes to the pursuit of love or the dogs of war, any action is justified. Whether or not you agree with this proverb, it is a strong idea filled with passion, heart, and conviction towards one’s goal. Undeniably, love and war are quite possibly two of the most aggressive and passionate pursuits. It makes sense that over the course of history, it is these two things — love and war — that have driven people to throw away normal rules or actions in the throes of conviction. A person must fight for what they believe in.
I have been thinking a lot about this proverb and its implications a lot lately. While I am not sure that I agree with the idea that anything is justifiable to secure a love or fight a war, I do undeniably feel that someone must act with authenticity and passion at all times. If a person truly feels a certain way or wants to do a particular action, then they must! If you love, then love hard and fierce, gentle and true. If you have a cause to fight for, do it with courage, valor, and nobility of heart. It is our intrinsic duty as human beings to use the heart and soul we have been so blessed with to live the most emotional, most purposeful, most driven lives we can. Life is too short to hold back, to not say what matters or to fight the good fight. There’s not enough time in our lives to not tell someone you love them, to hesitate to fight for the person you want. It is useless to hide our intentions, our love. Be the most emotional, most human version of oneself, at all times. A person only has more to gain by fighting for that which they love.
Because I have been thinking of this proverb so much, it has undoubtedly made it into my artwork. In due part, it is because I felt I had to express my emotions, as I have urged you here, in my work. My message was one I felt that I must say, as I felt it. However, this proverb is also a part of my latest assignment. For my Conceptual Design Thinking class, I had been tasked with a project about the union of opposites. For the assignment, I had to pick two opposite ideas and unify them into one illustration. Immediately, I knew that I wanted to cover both the ideas of love and war — but neither are really opposites of the other, albeit closely related. I experimented with a lot of different thumbnails for both love and hate, as well as peace and war. I also experimented with the ideas of love and heartbreak. I tested designs involving the human heart, weapons, animals, birds, and even flowers. Nothing was really sticking, and I was not happy with most of my ideas. I wanted to cover both love and war, but none of my ideas could really do both.
In the end, I decided to choose peace and war. A lot of my thumbnails had involved the use of doves for the symbol for peace, so I had resigned myself to developing this theme further. Picking out my symbol for war was much harder. Originally, I had thought the imagery of having the dove shot through the chest with an arrow could be intriguing, but nothing was really standing out for me. I finally decided to try to find another bird, and had thought about using a crow. Still, crows do not really represent war. Finally, after much thinking, I decided on the falcon — a bird of prey, sharp as a tack and as vicious as any mercenary.
With all these thoughts of the interplay between love and war, I did want to portray the ferocity and passion that the relationship between war and peace brings out. I wanted the dove to be an innocent bystander, a image of peace and goodwill, while the falcon preyed on the dove’s innocence. I also wanted the dove to be scared, albeit forgiving of the pain being inflicted on it. I played with compositions where the falcon was about to dive down onto the unsuspecting dove, but I felt that the relationship between war and peace had to be more connected. Having the birds closer together would emphasize this close connection. With that in mind, I worked on creating a composition where the birds would be in battle — or rather, the falcon would be preying on the helpless dove. War prays on peace, does it not? I decided to place the falcon behind the dove, one claw clamping down on the startled dove, the other claw splayed out searching for the dove’s other wing.
As I started to compose this new design, I noticed something startling about the sketch on my page! The falcon’s wings, combined with the dove’s outstretched feathers, created the vague shape of a heart. There it was! Just as love and hate find their way into peace and war, so did these symbols into my work. I leaned into the shape, emphasizing the wing’s shapes to further the symbolism of the heart among their battle. I also sharpened and thickened the inside neck/body contour line of the falcon so that the shadow of a broken heart would run down the middle of the composition.
The relation between the shapes and the birds is crucial to me. Love, hate, peace, and war are all so integral to each other. Love fuels peace, and hate ignites war. At the same time, love is the reason soldiers fight to defend, and peace can be the result of letting go of hate. War would be nothing without the relations between love and hate, and peace would be nothing without the battle between war, hate, and love. All four qualities are balanced on the dangerous edge, each threatening to topple the other at a moment’s notice. Within my own work, I wanted to portray this delicate balance within the shape language and symbolism. The dove and the falcon primarily represent war and peace, but doves also symbolize love. The birds are posed in the act of fighting, but the dove does not try to fight back, just as peace is prayed on by war and hate. The dove, also looks on with no malice, just as peace forgives earlier war. The birds are arranged in such a way that anything could happen between them; peace could escape the clutches of war, or war could crush peace with its razor-sharp talons. Underlying this entire relationship is the shape of the broken heart — a symbol of love and hate, but also that of heartbreak itself. Sometimes, both love and hate can result in heartbreak, and so can war and peace. All of these qualities are essential to my work’s message, and I hope that my symbols and shapes drive that point home.
In the end, I am proud of how much I poured into this piece. This has been a very personal and explorative piece, and a journey the entire time. I hope that you might find as much resonance in it as I did creating it, and I hope you remember that “All’s Fair in Love and War.” Seize the moment, live by your heart. Never sacrifice what you feel for the fear of a what-if, for fear of the unknown. I may be but a simple, humble blogger, but I beg of you this: live life like there’s no tomorrow, love with all your heart, and let the world know it.
With all my love,
–Rebecca Prowse