Catholic Online Forum

The Australian War Memorial has been sending artists into conflict zones for more than a century, but the War Memorial commissioned Quilty not to paint the diggers at war, but to paint the impact war had on them.

Like Quilty's thick layers of paint, the diggers' faces show a cumulative effect, recalling their Afghan experiences while they posed.

"A number of them have done two, three, four, five, six deployments to Afghanistan," Dr Nelson said.

Dr Nelson says the exhibition, fittingly called After Afghanistan, opens in Sydney next week.