One of the best kept secrets in downtown Milwaukee is the Grohmann Museum, an art collection of a few thousand pieces organized around humans at work. While not nearly as varied in theme, style, or medium as the world class Milwaukee Art Museum just over a few blocks, it is well worth a visit, and now is as good a time as ever thanks to the current special exhibit.

“We the People: Portraits of Veterans in America,” by Mary Whyte, opened in May and runs until August 23, and I urge you if you’re in the area not to miss it. The gallery of 50 large scale watercolors is a sobering, chilling, breathtaking depiction of veterans at work, carrying on as doctors, teachers, farmers, firefighters, or just trying to survive another day on the street.

Maybe I’d be moved to blog about it anyway (though my posting history the last few years suggests otherwise), but I’m especially compelled by it now because of how much it resonates with the content of Lives We Might Have Lived.

Leif, the main point of view character in The Hunter’s Tale and one of three main protagonists in Lives We Might Have Lived, is a veteran of the War in Afghanistan (2001-2021) struggling to find purpose in his life after the Marine Corps. He works odd jobs like waiter, snowplow driver, and ranch hand. His father had to do the same thing after returning from Vietnam, just as both Leif’s grandfathers had after fighting in Italy in World War II. It’s a difficult transition for all veterans, even for the ones who didn’t have traumatic experiences, and it’s an experience American society has been ill-equipped to help them through.

“We the People” challenges observers to see veterans – their swords beaten into plowshares – in the mundanities of everyday life, the banality of work, and the invisibility of normality. Whyte’s keen eye and skilled hands shows that wherever we find these veterans, their past is always close at hand.

Below is a selection of my favorites. Please, check out the exhibit at the Grohmann Museum while it’s still there. And then be sure to see the rest of the museum! Scientia sine arte nihil est.

Requiem. One of the less subtle pieces in the exhibit, but rendering a motorcycle hearse transport in a scene that evokes an IED explosion is effective. The billowing smoke threatens to overwhelm the scene, increasing the urgency of the mission.

Flurries. The World War II veteran here exhibits an expression common to the subjects in the collection, a sort of far away look. Maybe not vacant, maybe not a thousand yard-stare, but this rancher sees something else right now. Maybe his dog sees it, too.

Spiral. The way Whyte adds distortion and confusion to her pieces imbues them with anxiety. The subject here is a mayor, so he’s probably not in a dangerous situation right now, but he looks like he’s trapped or cornered or in hiding.

Family. Many of the pieces focus on veterans in the workplace, but this one features a veteran at home with their family. Quite cleverly, it’s implied that this is “work” too, as the profession for this Marine Corps veteran is “single mother.” Perhaps this explains why in this scene she and her sons are not smiling. Certainly this birthday celebration will contain smiles and laughter, but it’s fantasy that no part of it will feel like work.

Subterranean. So many veterans come home to enter into another difficult, dangerous, dirty, thankless job. The distortion of the dark spaces is effective again here, as is the exhausted, despairing expression of the underground subject.

Bunker. The most upsetting piece in the collection. A homeless man, seeking shelter, maybe not in a “bunker” but “bunking” down anyway, a blood red splash of paint springing from his head, his eyes down, his exhaustion and loneliness palpable. Stare at this and feel it and let your eyes water and your palms sweat. Again…he may be unemployed, but this is absolutely “work.”

Eternity. The brightness is stunning. What does he see from his chair? The sunrise? The Light?

Battleground. This former Army sergeant returned home and took up a job that has “fighter” in the title. He hasn’t left battlegrounds behind. The desolation of this painting is suffocating.

Homeland. I don’t know how subversive Whyte intends to be in this painting – potentially very. Has this Desert Storm-era Marine returned to civilian life to become a new kind of soldier? Is she serving and protecting the girl in the painting, or is she occupying her neighborhood? Is she actually the little girl?

Manhood. The painting fucking rules, even if I don’t know if that’s a mirror or a window behind the primary subjects (and maybe that’s the point?). Men at three different stages of life (a tactic used elsewhere in some of the Grohmann’s masterworks): the youth, serious, maybe even scared, his head being shaved, maybe stopping here at a Travis Bickle mohawk, maybe going all the way. What is it he is being prepared for and recruited into? The barber, big and strong, focused on his work. He and his coworker/comrade wear the same shade of green. A uniform? The old man – like, old as dirt – his expression vacant, exhausted, the space above his head distorted and confused. Is he a veteran, too? Has he been neglected? For how long? This is a masterpiece.

Driftwood. Daytime horror, of sorts. What could or should be a peaceful image of an old man relaxing by the sea is contextualized by the placard. The man is alive and the tree is dead, but have both been cut adrift and left behind? Are both dried out and withered and no longer able to protect or generate life? The man’s name is Hiroshi and he served 1943-1945. Which means either this is actually a veteran of the Japanese military, or that he’s a Japanese-American who served fought against the Axis powers in Europe or the Pacific. You can’t tell just from the painting. He might’ve drifted here either way.

Midnight. There’s very little I can say that this painting doesn’t say itself. But I will point out that this woman served in the Army for 34 years and attained the rank of Colonel. Presumably she could have retired. She didn’t; she’s a nurse, which isn’t exactly a retirement job.

Creation. It’s always interesting to me when an artist paints an artist. Here we see the aged artist’s eyes drawn upward to the light of his creation pulling him from the darkness below.

Truce. I really, really like this one for obvious reasons. There is something weightier beneath the surface I can’t grasp, something that would be there even if you didn’t know this man was a Marine in 1968-69 (which would make him a contemporary of Leif’s father).

Aspen Leaf. Combines many of the hallmarks of the collection, such as the use of darkness and the absolute agedness of the subject.

Evolution. The most chilling piece in the gallery. I’m sure some might interpret this as comedic, and there is a comical aspect to it. But to me the visual storytelling is quite clear. I don’t want to spoil it all for you; study it carefully and decide for yourself. It has haunted me from the moment I took it in, and has not relented with any subsequent pass.