The power of paper and ink in the digital age

George Butler is a war artist whose weapons are simply pen and ink, his humanity and his ability to capture generosity of spirit in conflict zones and disaster areas

Most of us tend to walk in safe, familiar places, in quiet woods and landscapes, seeking peace, birdsong, a space to breathe and think …
In 2013, George Butler walked from Turkey into Syria during the terrible civil war. He had hung back on the border, hoping to capture images of the exodus of refugees. ‘When I arrived, the reality was far away, 10 to 15 days from the border. I was trying to decide whether to be brave enough to go in on my own.’

He summoned the courage and crossed the border, reaching a little town called Azaz, where he captured images of the people who lived there and the refugees. He works in pen and ink, with an immediacy that has a powerful emotional impact.
From Syria to Ukraine, George has drawn and talked to people just trying to survive. A decade after his work in Syria and Lebanon, he spent several days in the Metro in Kharkiv, Ukraine, recording the lives of people living underground to avoid the Russian bombardment (these drawings are now in the National Archive at the Victoria and Albert museum in London).

Over a period of 15 years, George has been commissioned to offer a deliberately slow alternative to the headlines. He attaches his drawings to the personal testimonies of those who he meets and records their resolve and resilience alongside the vulnerability of their situations.
As well as recording the work of the Halo Trust, focusing on women clearing mines in Angola, he has portrayed life in a Leprosy Clinic in Nepal, a Yemeni militia, mass graves in Bucha, Ukraine, a caesarean-section in Afghanistan, the artisanal oil fields of Myanmar and, for The Guardian, documented the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
The Angola commission led to his work with The Wilderness Project, a science-based organisation dedicated to building a resilient system of protection for Africa’s crucial and sacred freshwater ecosystems.
After several years of email requests, he was accepted to work as an artist with them – he cites the importance of the work recording places, people and ecology, and of predecessors such as the artists who accompanied the pioneering environmental explorer Alexander von Humboldt or the naval explorer and cartographer Captain Cook. George spent six weeks with the project on his first visit, and has returned, mostly to Angola, to draw the people who live on the edge of these pristine wilderness areas.

A human dimension
While war artists nowadays are more likely to be photographers – the unflinching nonpareil is the now-Somerset-based Don McCullin – George Butler’s chosen medium gives his work a unique perspective … bold but thoughtful, honest but empathetic.
He says this style of work is particularly necessary in the age of AI, when everything is ‘so quick and narrow on our mobiles.’ He believes that his slower and more thoughtful art provides necessary connections for the viewer with the subject and with our past.
He works with pen and ink, drawing on A2 sheets – he finds a conventional sketchbook ‘intimidating’ – and sometimes using watercolours. He says that working with these simple materials, ‘just sitting there and drawing’ makes for ‘a real open-ness and a human dimension.’
Michael Morpurgo has called him ‘the Paul Nash of our era. No one has captured in art the destruction and suffering of modern warfare as powerfully as George Butler.’ (Nash was a famous First World War artist, and lived for some time in Dorset).

The much-loved writer and the award-winning* artist have actually worked together, meeting via a shared agent and Michael’s interest in Action Syria, the charity that George co-founded to deliver a wide range of aid and services to Syrian refugees, including those in the Bekaa valley of Lebanon. Michael gave a talk for the charity, and they went on to discuss the possibility of working together
The result was a new illustrated edition of Michael Morporgo’s best-selling 1982 War Horse (which was famously a play, to be revived at the National Theatre this year, and later a film.)

A first draft of history
Born in Oxfordshire, George was always drawn to art, and studied illustration at Kingston Art College. In his final year, he was embedded with the British Army in Afghanistan, drawing soldiers waiting to go to war. He always admired illustrators, including Ronald Searle and Kathe Kollwitz, and others whose work is what we now know as reportage – defined as the act, style or collective process of reporting news and events through newspapers, television, radio or digital media; it can also describe a literary or artistic style that presents factual information in a vivid, narrative format, often based on first-hand observation.
This certainly defines George’s work, as shown in a series of pictures he produced after talking to refugees in the Bekaa valley.
In 2013, he was asked by a medical charity to describe some of the most common scenes in the valley, where the population of four million people was increased by a million refugees from Syria.
He asked each family that he met to show him the belongings they had brought from Syria: ‘In some cases it had been nothing. In others it was a collection of bits and pieces. These belongings told their own stories.’
The pictures from this project, grouped under the title ‘Everything I own: refugees in Bekaa’, range from a watch, passport and ring, to a heartbreaking handful of objects including a teddy bear, torch, mobile phone and kettle with two tiny Arab tea or coffee cups. Another is a portrait of a woman wearing a dark turban headdress – on her face are etched the lines of suffering and survival that seem to symbolise women in war, conflict and disaster through the millennia.

Many writers and journalists admire George Butler’s work. They include a man who has seen more than his fair share of war and devastation, the BBC’s international editor: Jeremy Bowen. He says: ‘George Butler is in the front rank of chroniclers of our troubled times. His work shows the power of paper and ink in the digital age.’
Another senior BBC correspondent, Lyse Doucet, describes his work as ‘a remarkable first draft of history – raw and revelatory … Butler’s gentle engagement draws out stories of profound sadness, but also of courage and strength.’
While war correspondents and artists acknowledge an irresistible pull to their work, it also causes burn-out. George, who is 41, recognises this may happen: ’I think I will always be drawn to war zones, but there is also a feeling of homesickness that draws me home.
‘It does take an emotional toll. Not a week goes past when I don’t think of the people from Syria and Ukraine.’
But, he says, there is also positivity, whether it is refugees in Syria or militia in Yemen: “I have felt great humanity in the way they speak and their generosity of spirit.’
He makes a distinction between his pen and ink reportage and the pressures facing the war correspondents and photographers: ‘My role is to be a little more gentle, not taking the risks of the front line needed for the front page.’
George Butler’s new book, UKRAINE Remember Also Me: Testimonies from the War, is out now. He is among the guest speakers at this year’s Sturminster Newton Literary Festival, running from 12th to 19th June, and will discuss his work and front-line experiences at The Exchange on Monday 15th June at 6.30pm. Tickets are £8 via sturlitfest.com

• In the International Media Awards in 2013, George Butler won the Breakaway Award for his work in Syria.

By Fanny Charles