In Inherited Images: A Daughter's Journey Through Art and War, I uncover the life and art of my father, Leonard Eason, a young RAF conscript whose wartime diaries and luminous Neo‑Romantic watercolours reveal an artist shaped by conflict and loss. When I inherited his unpublished diaries and twenty‑four wartime paintings, I began to piece together the story he never told: a journey from RAF training camps across Britain to Egypt, Algeria, and finally post‑war Austria, where he painted the now‑vanished RAF camp at Klagenfurt.

 

My search took an unexpected turn when I discovered a plain green binder among my uncle John's belongings: my father's identical twin's unpublished autobiography. John's vivid recollections of their childhood, their years at Epsom Art School under Royal Academician and war artist Stanley Spencer, and the unspoken grief that followed their older brother's death at sea in 1942 opened up new pathways into our family's creative inheritance.

 

Spanning five generations of artists, Inherited Images blends memoir, biography, and art history to explore how families remember, more crucially, how art offers solace and resistance in times of war and peace, and how the traces left behind help us understand those we loved.

​

 

You may find my blog about my father's day out in the medieval town of Friesach and the watercolour he painted there an interesting read. 

​

​

​If you want to stay updated on this project, you can join my site to be notified or sign up for my blog. Amelia's Blog | Author Amelia Marriette

​​

I have also written a little about my father in my book Walking into Alchemy: The Transformative Power of Nature (Mereo Books, 2019). I have just a few signed full-colour publisher copies left  - you can order from me directly with free P&P in the UK and Europe. Please hit this link to find out more: Walking into Alchemy | Author Amelia Marriette

 

​

IMAGES:

Inherited Images: A Daughter's Journey Through Art and War.

(Provisional cover design, final version may differ.)

​Friesach, Austria, 16 August 1947, Watercolour, Leonard Eason, while serving at RAF Klagenfurt.

​An Example of a page from one of Leonard Eason's handwritten diaries.​

Dennis Eason, in Royal Marines Uniform, 1941

Alice, Edwin, my father and his twin, John, on holiday in post-war Devon. The family photograph is marred by Dennis's absence.