Saturday, January 21, 2012

Time to face facts



For several years now I have been working on what I've come to title my Civil War 150 Project, with a goal of working in a chronological order to create works focusing on the often-overlooked people and events of the Civil War era. As we begin 2012, we are in the 150th anniversary for the year 1862, which featured such battles as Shiloh, Second Manassas, Antietam and Fredericksburg. And while it continues to be my intention to study each of the battles carefully and create works to represent them, I realize that it is not going to be possible to cover them in-depth, as I've done so far with the First Battle of Manassas, within one year's time, and still stay on track with my additional project of developing works that relate to the civilians of Gettysburg. Because my gallery is located in Gettysburg, and so that I may be able to do justice to that series in time for our 150th anniverary commemoration in 2013, I realize that I'm going to have to make some sacrifices. I've finally resolved that, since Antietam and Fredericksburg are closer in proximity to my Gettysburg gallery, I will focus on producing a few pieces that relate to them. Once we've passed the 150th anniversary period in Gettysburg, I plan to revisit some of the other battles of 1862 and 1863 that I've had to skip over for now.

I've had to put the brakes on my Basil Biggs project once again, as I've recently learned that there may be another source of photographic images of him that I had not known about, and want to look into that before I go further. In the meantime, I have a number of Civil War-related commissions that I will be posting in this spot, and will begin developing some pieces dealing with Antietam. Relating to that, today's post shows a piece I created in 2002 for their 140th anniversary. The print edition is sold out; however the original art is available for purchase. Please contact me at civilwarfineart@yahoo.com, if you are interested in learning more about this piece. As always, I invite you to visit my website, www.CivilWarFineArt.com, to view all of my Civil War-themed works.