ARLINGTON, Va. — Spc. Brandon Tobler, an Army reservist from Portland, Ore., grew up with one mom.

But now that Tobler’s life has ended — cut short at age 19 in a vehicle crash during a blinding sandstorm in Iraq on March 22, 2003 — the young soldier has two moms: his birth mother, and Washington portrait artist Annette Polan.

Now Tobler “is my baby, too,” Polan said March 15, as she ran her fingers gently over the surface of the 6-inch-by-8-inch portrait she created for the new “Faces of the Fallen” project.

Polan traced a finger over the portrait’s full lips.

“His mouth is so alive for me,” she murmured. “I see it and think, ‘I hope he had a girlfriend. I hope he had his first kiss.’ ”

The power of art to spark emotions in that manner — emotions a photograph may leave untouched — is what Polan and more than 150 volunteer artists are hoping to evoke with “Faces of the Fallen,” an exhibition of 1,327 individual portraits of servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The exhibit, which opens to the public March 23 at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 5, includes portraits or silhouettes of every servicemember killed while deployed as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom through Nov. 11, 2004.

Polan, a renowned portrait artist and professor of art at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, got her idea for the exhibit after her 81-year-old mother died in January 2004.

“I spent most of the winter,” trying to deal with the grief, Polan said.

And at some point during that mourning process, Polan saw the periodic Washington Post feature “Faces of the Fallen.”

The Post publishes the photos of as many servicemembers as possible that have died in Iraq or Afghanistan in a gallery format.

Looking at the latest Post installment, “I had a ‘eureka’ moment,” Polan said.

She envisioned a space dedicated not to photographs, but to portraits, which she believes are ultimately more revealing.

Retired Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, the Women’s Memorial Foundation president and a friend of Polan, was an early supporter.

Vaught acted as a liaison with the Defense Department, as well as offering the memorial as the exhibit space.

Before the project got under way, the different military services mailed letters to each family whose portrait was scheduled to be part of the exhibit, giving them the opportunity not to participate if they so chose.

They were also informed that once the exhibit is done touring, each honored servicemember’s family would be given the portrait.

Not a single family declined, Polan said.

If the initial display proves popular enough, and enough donations come their way, the nonprofit “Faces” board of directors hope to both sponsor more portraits, and to put the exhibit on a national tour, Polan said.

Each painting is mounted on a specially designed gray holder on a pole — a format inspired by a photograph of a graveyard in Qom, Iraq, where each person’s grave is marked by a photo of the deceased, Polan said.

The intent of the portraits, however, is not to remind viewers of death, but to celebrate lives that are normally noted only in ever-growing statistics, said Dennis O’Neil, an expert in print-making who provided 200 hand-screened silhouettes for the exhibit that are “place holders” for servicemembers whose photos were not available, or whose assigned artists have not completed their assignments.

“When one artist deals with one soul, you’re re-humanizing the fact that these people lost their lives,” said O’Neil, who in addition to working as an artist is also a professor of art at the Corcoran.

Whether dealing in paint, wood, fabric or any other allowable medium, each “Faces” artist had “to stretch himself to find something about that person, somehow capture a piece of their humanity,” O’Neil said.

Before the exhibit opens to the public, there will be a special reception and viewing for the families of the servicemembers. Polan said that 1,800 family members have indicated that they will attend, including a family traveling from India for the event, and a military widow who is coming from Australia.

For all the viewers of “Faces of the Fallen,” Polan said, “what I really hope [the exhibit] ultimately has is the quality of healing.”

“We as a country are going through a very divisive time,” Polan said.

“But we can all agree as Americans that the troops who sacrificed their lives, deserve to be honored and remembered.”

To see a slide show of many of the completed portraits, and to learn more about Faces of the Fallen, go to: www.facesofthefallen.org.

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