This latest painting depicts the dawnbreak arrival of a whaleman (whose perspective we share) into his home port after a lengthy voyage which we know sometimes lasted up to 4 or 5 years. The scene is strongly derivative of my great great great-grandfather's experience aboard whalers based out of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

24" x 36" oil on canvas. $350 + s & h In this painting I tell the story of the Quaker abolitionists in coastal Maryland that harbored fugitive slaves in subterranean tunnels that lead to waterways. Once at the docks along tidal creeks and rivers, fugitives boarded vessels headed north on the Chesapeake Bay.

Acrylic on canvas approx. 24" x 36." One of my first paintings (cerca 2001) Randolph Place depicts my home and the neighboring row houses on the unit block of Randolph Place NW in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood of Washington, DC.

This 46" x 52" oil on canvas piece is essentially a "study" or exercise in which I focussed intently on all the various elements that makes the Potomac river "alive." The study purposely does not include the river banks or any reference to land or watercraft, it only includes a section of the breadth of waterway between Hains Point, DC and National Airport in Virginia.

This brigantine on Buzzards Bay, MA depicts a moment in a larger narrative that I developed from the real events of my great, great, great grandfather's life. This is the moment when his family nears their destination of New Bedford, MA in 1850 after a tumultuous journey.

30" x 40" Oil on Canvas. $350 + s&h Not to be confused with the home of movie studios and celebrity mansions, this Hollywood is an area on the James River in Richmond, where elevation drops several feet along the fall line and creates class IV and V rapids unlike any other river on the east coast. Over the period of a month, I studied the river from Belle Isle and took several photos and sketches to develop this painting.

30"x40" ($250 plus s&h) A man concealed only by a large brimmed hat and the darkness of night tries to escape into open water. Threatening guards patrol the mouth of this inlet. Note the left bank of the inlet is a field of dead salt meadow cordgrass and the right bank has lively smooth cordgrass--the dichotomy is a deliberate illustration of the stakes our protagonist faces.

24" x 36" Lithograph At the sunset of this seaman's life's journey, he returns to place where he always felt at home.

Oil Stick on Paper This oil stick drawing was made to honor my ancestors whose hard work to provide a way for their descendants (me) makes me wish I could at least pull out a chair for them to rest.

Here my focus was the African-American agricultural history (particularly my own ancestry) and through the title I tied that with another tradition and history of braiding hair in cornrows. Cornrows, the hairstyle, have been around since forever, predating the African American experience, beginning in Africa, but they now have a hip-hop influenced popularity. But you can imagine whoever first named the style did so at a time when rows of corn were inextricably tied to one's livelihood.

24"x36" $300 + s&h With this piece I tried to imagine how Poplar Island, Maryland would have looked 40 years after the historical Carroll family's farm had been sacked by the British in 1812-14 and fields of cord grass and vines had taken over the once tilled land. The scene is something I have written about in my historical fiction novel I've been working on and I found it always helps to paint and write about the same thing. One informs the other.

Oil on Canvas 18"x 24" During one of my first excursions around the town of Richmond, I came to Byrd Park near the very beautiful Maymont Park. That whole area is probably Richmond's best place for a nature-loving artist like me, only second to the James River Parks. When I found this view of Swan Lake between two elms, I was captured by the composition they formed and knew it had to be my next painting.

Oil on Canvas 30"x40" $350 + s&h I painted this one after taking a series of predawn trips to Belle Isle in Richmond, VA and trying to capture through sketch, memory, notation, and photograph, the mood and atmosphere of watching the sunrise on those cool, spring mornings. I'd go back to my apartment/studio and flesh out everything afterwards.

Oil on Canvas 36"x48" $400 + s&h This painting depicts a schooner tossed about during an infamous hurricane that made landfall on the Florida panhandle and ripped north through the southern U.S. and Chesapeake Bay in 1851.

Oil on Canvas 30" x 40" $300 + s&h A mother, her children and her male companion steal away at night to head north. This move was made necessary with the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, which not only gave the legal go-ahead to law enforcement and "concerned" citizens to forcibly return fugitive slaves anywhere within the United States to their owner for reward, but it had the collateral effect of subjecting freed blacks like these characters to being sacked and kidnapped at whim.

This piece was inspired by a visit to the South Carolina Sea Islands between Charleston and Beaufort. I was impressed by vastness of the salt marsh, the rich sunsets between dense forest, etc. Bottom center, a Gullah fisherman is shrowded in blades of grass to heighten contrast in scale--thus the title.

This painting was my ode to the long lost tradition of African Americans who tonged the creeks of Charles, Calvert and St. Mary's County (Southern Maryland) and shucked hordes of oysters for little pay. This tradition was the backbone of these communities for generations.