Blickling artist depicts First World War at Salthouse show
Artist Jessica Perry with her work at the Not Yet Dead Nearly exhibition at Salthouse church. Picture: ANTONY KELLY - Credit: Archant
The horrors of the First World War inspired by a soldier's diary will be represented in a village art exhibition.
Artist Jessica Perry is showing her work at the Not Yet Dead Nearly exhibition at Salthouse church. A photograph of her grandfather Private Sydney Roy Perry.Picture: ANTONY KELLY - Credit: Archant
Not Yet Dead Nearly at Salthouse church runs until this Sunday and features work by Jessica Perry, 51, from Blickling, and Ruth Calland and Jonathan Waller from Walthamstow.
Mrs Perry, an art educational specialist, has created plaster cast panels representing war graves and mechanical birds and a wooden structure featuring excerpts from her grandfather's 1918 Western Front diary.
Sydney Perry, originally from Cheshire, joined the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders infantry regiment and was sent to Belgium and France.
He worked with horses and carried water to and from the trenches, sometimes travelling up to 20km a day.
He survived and worked in a flour mill after the war before moving to north Wales with his wife Bet. He died when his granddaughter was eight-years-old.
Mrs Perry said: 'I was very fond of him. He was such a gentle and positive person. He had a sense of humour and I'm glad he survived mentally and physically. I have enormous respect for his strength to get through the war. The diary was a real eye-opener. It allowed us to document that part of our family history.
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'War is very much on the cards at the moment. It is very pertinent to examine the legacy of the Great War.'
The exhibition is named after the acronym Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous - the official diagnosis of shell shock.
It is free to visit and is open 10am-5.30pm daily.
Are you putting on anything to mark the First World War in north Norfolk? Email sophie.wyllie@archant.co.uk
