John Brown, Abolitionist: "The Prophet"

Another key player in the events that eventually led to the beginning of the Civil War was the abolitionist, John Brown. I created this image in 2009 after researching his life, and several of my sources contained photographs of him from various eras. I was immediately struck by the short period of time that separated the two images I eventually selected to create this painting: the first was taken in 1847, the second only TWELVE YEARS late, in 1859! To be fair, in the second photo, he had grown the long, flowing beard in hopes that it might help disguise his appearance. Still, that's a pretty dramatic change to have occur in one's appearance, in only twelve years; most likely indicative of the tremendous stress his life and abolitionist activities created for him.

I'm honored to report that in October of 2009, the U.S. Marine Corps selected this image for the cover of their history magazine, Fortitudine,  to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Brown's raid on the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). To see this and more pieces of art in my Civil War 150 Project, please visit my website, http://www.civilwarfineart.com/ .

Taking a break from Sarah

After many days of feeling that I was finished with my most recent piece, this morning I hit upon an addition I wanted to make -- and now it really does feel finished. So it's off to the photographer's, and once I get the professional digital image I'll post the actual, final version. (As a result, I renamed my last post "Stage Seven", rather than "Final".

For Sarah Emma Edmonds II, I will be working with the stage of her life where she creates and adopts her new, male identity. I have a visual image of a shady pine forest that I think will play a strong role as a setting for this piece, since Sarah Emma travelled by night and hid in the woods by day, until she had grown accustomed to her new identity. Beyond that, I have some research and brainstorming to do. So in the meantime, I've begun a large -- 24" x 24" -- close-up portrait of Frederick Douglass. I've already completed portraits of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown, two key players in the anti-slavery movement; they may be viewed on my website at http://www.civilwarfineart.com/. But as passionate as they were for the abolitionist cause, their experiences would have been very different from those of a man who had been born into slavery and managed to escape its bonds to become a dynamic and eloquent abolitionist speaker.

There are many photographic images of Frederick Douglass, and I am nearly finished with a small piece depicting him in his later years. But for my large portrait I wanted to focus on a much earlier image, taken in the 1850's, at about the same time he would have met with John Brown in Chambersburg, PA, to discuss Brown's plan of an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. This image shows a much more intense, almost fiery expression in Douglass' eyes, and it is the eyes that I believe will be key to the success of this portrait.

I am working on Gessobord again, and began by doing an underpainting of watercolor pencil sprayed with water and allowed to drip. The basic drawing has been laid over top using a Tuscan Red Prismacolor Artstix.