Stage Seven, Sarah Emma Edmonds: Departure

I've been studying this piece and debating its merits for long enough now, without a firm conviction that there is more I should do. I keep feeling like I should be adding something more, but in thinking about my goals for it, I don't know that it would help it in any way to do that. There's really very little change that has taken place since the last step; I did even out the color along the right border, and have added some smaller details and refinements that wouldn't show up at this scale online. When I get it professionally photographed and added to my website (www.CivilWarFineArt.com ), hopefully those things will be more evident. This final version photographed darker than it really is; some of the color and detail in the lower section are lost.

When I say that I believe that I've come fairly close to meeting my goals with this, here is what I mean. Each new piece I add to my Beyond the Battlefield series, I strive to make successful on three different levels: 1) my reaction to or interpretation of a factual, historical person or event, 2) relevant and informed by my personal experience, 3) representative of a larger, universal truth. When I write my narratives for my works, I limit myself to only those things which refer to the historical person or event that inspired the piece. In this case, I mentioned earlier that I wanted the water to be present as a backdrop for this piece, because of what I believe would be the influence of Magaguadavic Lake on Sarah Emma's formative years. The image of the book represents an incident that Emma says had a tremendous impact on her when she was about thirteen. A peddler had visited their home, and as it was getting late in the day, Emma's mother invited the man to stay at their home until morning. When he was leaving the next day, as a token of appreciation for the family's kindness, the peddler gave Emma a novel, something that her strict father would never have allowed had he known about it. The novel was a melodramatic account of a young heroine who disguised herself as a man in order to rescue her lover from captivity. Emma recalled her feelings after reading the novel by saying, "I felt as if an angel had touched me with a live coal from off the altar" (reminiscent of an account in the biblical book of Isaiah). "I was emancipated. And I could never again be a slave." In my piece, the birds flying away from the book and the live coals, represent that emancipation. The water, very dark in the lower portion of the composition, brightens as the birds continue upward.

Sarah Emma Edmonds: Departure also has significance for me on a personal level, and I believe represents very well a more universal truth. But those are things I leave up to the viewer to ponder.

Stage Three, Sarah Emma Edmonds: Departure

This image was shot earlier today. I have made a fair amount of progress on the water imagery since the last image posted, and have now begun to include some of the other elements; most notably, the suggestion of birds flying up out of the water and to the top and right sections of the format. As the birds are meant to be symbolic, my intention is to keep them minimally described, but I'm not yet convinced that they're as developed as I'd like them to be. Part of what I like about posting things online is that it enables me to look at the composition in a slightly different way than when I'm looking at the actual work-in-progress. So I'll study it a while and contemplate my next move.

Stage Two, Sarah Emma Edmonds: Departure

This view is from October 10, 2009. Progress has been slow, for several reasons. First, I'm experimenting by using a different type of surface -- a product called Gessobord -- for this piece, which measures 18" x 24". It's a very rough, hard surface, much different from the paper surfaces I normally use, and requires a lot of pencil pressure and many layers for the pigment to really stick to the surface. Second, while I know that I want the format to be dominated by this view of choppy water -- symbolic of Magaguadavic Lake -- on whose shores Sarah Emma grew up and whose waters and character, I feel strongly, greatly impacted her, I am uncertain of the best approach to take to convey the mood I'm hoping for. Also, there are other elements which I want to incorporate into the composition and am struggling with how best to do that. So there are a lot of unanswered questions, for me, and I have a strong tendency to let it sit and focus on other things -- commission work, new images for my Christmas card series, local Gettysburg scenes. Those things don't seem quite so demanding.