Original artwork, made to order

The Weight They Carry

Fifteen months as a combat medic in Iraq, and the years it took to understand what came back with me — rendered as art built to be lived with, not just looked at.

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Why this exists

I was a combat medic with 5-20 Infantry, deployed to Iraq in 2006. My job was to be the calm thing in the middle of the worst thing happening. That doesn't turn off when the deployment ends. It just stops having anywhere to go.

This series is where it goes.

Every piece starts with something real — a role, an object, a moment that never made it into any after-action report. I turn those into something closer to how they actually felt than a photograph ever could.

This isn't military art in the recruiting-poster sense. It's what service actually costs, made by someone who paid part of that cost and is still working out the balance. If you served, you'll likely recognize something here before you can name it. If you didn't, I hope it brings you closer to understanding someone who did.

— Jake, medic, firefighter

The collection

Archival, museum-grade prints. Each one is made when you order it, not pulled from a shelf — so nothing sits waiting, and nothing arrives less than it should.

A civilian paramedic and a young combat medic reaching toward each other across a divide, passing a stethoscope between two worlds
Stethoscope Across the Divide
This one started with realizing a stethoscope doesn't know if you're wearing scrubs or body armor — it does the same job either way. Two versions of the same calling reach across the line between them, handing off the one thing that never changes.
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A figure in full combat armor with the chest opened to reveal straps and, at the center, a small glowing image of a child curled up
Layers of Protection
This one started with counting how many layers actually stand between a person and someone else's worst day — plates, straps, training, silence. Underneath all of it is still the kid who needed protecting in the first place.
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An older firefighter on oxygen, a glowing line running from his chest to a boy sitting alone on a rooftop edge in the background
Worn Out, Untreated Wound
This one started with the wounds nobody bandages — the ones that never show up on a call sheet. A lifetime later, the line still runs straight back to the boy on the ledge, watching and waiting for someone to come home whole.
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A vehicle driver at the wheel, surrounded by screens, mirrors, and doubled eyes reflecting everything happening around him
Stryker Driver
This one started with how much a driver sees and how little of it he's allowed to react to — eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, everything else running through his head at once. You drive it whether you're steady or not.
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A sergeant shouting and leading soldiers forward through smoke, faces of others visible in the haze behind him
Sergeant
This one started with the moment a sergeant has to be louder than his own fear so everyone behind him keeps moving. The faces that don't make it stay in the frame either way.
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A soldier shouting into a radio handset, birds pouring from his mouth into the sky, tangled in cords and wire
Radio Operator
This one started with the words that have to go out over the net no matter what's actually happening in your chest when you say them. Some of what gets carried never comes back down.
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A combat medic tending to a wounded soldier, a golden cross glowing on his chest plate amid dark ink and shadow
Golden Cross
This one started with the one steady point of light in a night that has none — the cross on a medic's plate, keeping to its job while everything else around it is chaos. It's the part of the uniform that means something no matter how dark it gets.
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A soldier holding an IV pole where the bags glow like paper lanterns, standing over a fallen comrade at night
IVs as Lanterns
This one started with needing the IV bags to be something more than plastic and fluid at 0300, standing over someone who needed more than either. Here they're lanterns — the only light either of you gets that night.
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