"The 'scar' drawings were begun in November 2011 following the end of my time coordinating a Heritage Lottery funded project which set out to explore the life of a soldier through the visual arts. Being involved with active servicemen, war artists, veterans and staff at The Imperial War Museum all served to open doors on my own knowledge of conflict. Towards the end of the 2 year project, Other Worlds. I had the opportunity to mentor and work alongside a 26 year old serviceman. Together we explored our own personal moments in time, experienced within a war situation. I dug deep but with an overriding obstacle - the fact that I had no photographs from this period of my life (on arriving In England I had systematically destroyed them - they seemed to warrant staying hidden). I produced a small but significant body of work, mostly oil on canvas and essentially landscape, narrating this time, concerned with a feeling of place fermented In the memory - drawn more to what happened there in those spaces. Having kept a notebook of this collaboration these 'scar' drawings are an extension of this 'storying'. They are neither didactic nor rhetorical, they are the facts accompanying the threats associated with trying to survive - and the impact such situations have on the human spirit.

These scar drawings are my committed attempt to explore my memories, and make sense of a chain of events over a period of time. Some convey a return to actual incidents, places and times - beyond mere recall, and these drawings I consider finished. Originally made to fit in a small, wooden cigar box, - I hadn't thought I may, on occasion, need to express a voice louder than a whisper - I have, at times, ventured to larger surface areas.

​These drawings are very private and yet there is the anomaly of wanting them to be seen."
Prudence Maltby

Book of Scars, Prudence Maltby 2014