Lee Teter Reflection Essay

Lee Teter created his painting Reflections in 1988 using oils on canvas. Just as the title suggests, the painting’s subject is reflections on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. The painting belongs to a private collection owned by Teter himself. In Reflections, Teter depicts a man leaning on the Vietnam Memorial Wall as soldiers reflect back on him, captures on canvas these reflections using muted hues, and immortalizes the loss and struggle of those affected by the Vietnam War.

Among all the objects in Lee Teeter`s oil on canvas painting entitled Reflections (Fig. 1), the focal point is one long, dark wall, with names written or engraved across the whole canvas along with the engravings on the marble creating motivation for individuals viewing the

The Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC was dedicated on November 13, 1982-Veterans Day- this was seven years after the official end of the world. Speaking of the artwork’s date of origination, one can easily say Teter`s Reflections was painted during a time when Vietnam was still a sore subject; the picture is commended as a healing work by some. The painting was an answe r to the question of “could the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial serve a healing purpose to finally close that conflict of twenty years ago?” (Krohn 165). Teter tries to capture the reality of the effects of the veterans on the gently flexed pair of black polished walls, through “The reflections in it of the servicemen…the Memorial… also reflects us, the visitors” (Danto 152). When approaching the memorial, it first appears as a chevron, which is a symbol that many men in the war were drafted and died as privates, because the chevron is the insignia of a private (Fig. 2). The wall starts at ground level, and gradually begins to grow to a towering 10.1 feet in height, this symbolizes the gradual nature of how the United Stated became involved in the war and how slowly we the pulled out of the war. The black granite on white engraving is used to characterize the racial integration and equality of soldiers in the war

Although seemingly simple in design, Reflections becomes deeply meaningful on closer look. The grid-like nature and repetition