215:. It was an incident concerning seventeen thousand Anglo-Australian POWs, who were forced to vacate their buildings and be exposed for nearly five days in the open without water or sanitation for refusing to sign a "No Escape Pledge". Against this backdrop, Warren began to paint the murals. No one had asked the Japanese for permission to draw and at no stage did they interfere with his work. Considering the purpose of the murals, Warren felt that the chapel was basically dedicated to peace and reconciliation, and so he choose universal themes for the murals which would embrace all mankind. Paint was not readily available in the camp, but with the aid of the other prisoners, who unquestionably put themselves at great risk, materials to make the paint were gradually acquired — brown camouflage paint, a small amount of crimson paint, white oil paint and
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and getting essential services back to working order. The food given to the prisoners was of poor quality and inadequate for men working as slave labour. As a result of this and the harsh treatment meted out by the
Japanese guards such as the beatings and executions of escaped prisoners, the men's health and morale began to suffer in the long run.
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Luke Chapel's inspiring murals was designated to become a store for an airfield nearby. The lower portion of St Luke in Prison mural was almost completely destroyed when it was demolished to make a link to an adjoining room. The walls of the chapel were distempered over, hiding the murals from view. Warren was later sent to
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to Malaya, and remained there until the
Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945. After the war, Warren returned to England believing that his murals had been destroyed by Allied bombing towards the end of the war. He married and became an art teacher at the Sir William Collins School, later South Camden
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chalk were found and brought for Warren use. Despite still being very ill, Warren set to work on the murals in early
September 1942. His illness meant that he could only paint for a limited period each day, for perhaps 15 minutes at a time followed by a rest. To compensate as much as he could for the
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All of them were subjects which are at the very heart of
Christian belief. The completed murals uplifted the spirits of the POWs and sick when they sought refuge in the chapel. Warren never put his name on any of his paintings as he considered them "a gift to God". In May 1944, Block 151 with the St
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Chambers and Payne had heard that Warren had decorated the prisoners' chapel at Bukit Batok. So they asked him if he would do some paintings for St Luke's Chapel, which was recently converted from the ground floor of Block 151, near the area where Warren was recuperating. The chapel was dedicated to
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POWs were ordered to march to Changi for internment; the 15,000 Australians went into
Selarang Barracks and the British to Roberts and Kitchener Barracks. Warren was interned at Roberts Barracks and later joined other POWs to work around Singapore, repairing damage inflicted by the Japanese attacks
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Warren was eventually found in 1959 and, after much persuasion, agreed to assist in the restoration project. He made three trips to
Singapore between 1963 and 1988 to restore his former paintings. Because of his advanced age, only four of the original murals were fully restored. In the 1990s, the
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had been bombed. Upon their arrival, their fight against the
Japanese was brutal and short-lived, and soon his battalion began retreating to Singapore. The Changi Garrison, a heavily fortified coastal defence where most of the British forces were based, consisted of three army barracks; the 2nd
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lack of coloured paint, Warren resorted to using large brush strokes and big areas of solid colour when painting. In
September 1942, a few weeks after Warren began painting the murals, he was informed that his work party was to be sent north to Thailand to work on the
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Battalion Gordon
Highlanders in the Selarang Barracks, the Royal Engineers in Kitchener Barracks, and the 9th Coastal Artillery Regiment of the Royal Artillery in Roberts Barracks. By 12 February, the situation in Singapore was desperate and
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plaque today, only the stairs and road called Lorong Sesuai are still there to be seen). The chaplain of the regiment, well aware of Warren's religious conviction and artistic background, requested him to decorate the
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During one of the work parties, Warren was sent to build a road and stairs leading to a memorial to the
Japanese dead on Bukit Batok Hill (marked with a
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On 30 August 1942, at the time when Warren was preparing the draft drawings of the murals, the Japanese began an action which would become known as the
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as an observation post assistant. His responsibilities included having to make quick drawings of panoramas used to plot targets for the guns.
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in which he included soldiers in uniforms, using his comrades as models. By then, he was becoming ill and was suffering from a severe
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The murals were discovered in 1958 and a search was made to find the artist. Warren was, by that time, an art teacher at
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By mid-August 1942, Warren had recovered enough to be moved to the dysentery wing at Block 151 of Roberts Barracks.
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Stubbs, P.W. (2003). The Changi Murals: The story of Stanley Warren's war. Singapore: Landmark Books. (
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An artist before the war Warren was employed as a commercial designer producing poster ads with the
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the Physician. Warren agreed, and sought inspiration for the proposed paintings in the
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by a colleague at Barnsbury Central school, where he was the Art Teacher in 1957.
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Lloyd-Smith, Jake (17 September 2005). "Rough-spun memories of terrible time".
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After the British surrender of Singapore on 15 February 1942, Warren and
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and was a talented artist from a young age. Warren was educated at
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which was converted for use as a hospital for POWs to recuperate.
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former site of the murals was gazetted as a Heritage Site by the
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Stubbs, "The Painting of the Changi Murals", pp. 50—55.
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National Heritage Board, "Changi Murals", pp. 103—104.
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By Christmas 1942, he completed his first mural, the
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Stubbs, "The Rediscovery of the Murals", pp. 84—88.
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536:1992 deaths
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258:Last Supper
251:Crucifixion
510:Categories
327:References
60:Early life
38:bombardier
244:Ascension
303:and then
299:, later
291:Post-war
276:Causeway
237:Nativity
229:Nativity
217:billiard
167:Nativity
159:asbestos
112:Thailand
108:Japanese
104:Malaysia
206:Gospels
202:St Luke
174:Madonna
77:Grenada
66:England
446:17 May
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272:Kranji
197:Padres
190:Changi
135:Allied
114:, and
100:Malaya
34:Dorset
182:renal
171:Malay
163:attap
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