This is the work that i do when I go on location with reenactors. I needed to get the right shots of the reenactors while they were in the water, so I got in the water and mud. The days was about 5 hours and very wet. The reenactors like me more after a day like this. I paid them with copies of the final prints, they were willing to accept this payment.

When the war was not going well in the northwest territory, Clark, a savvy Caroline county native with some frontier military experience in Kentucky, got an audience with governor Patrick Henry, a secret meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia. Henry also met secretly with close associates and finally provided Clark with money to form an expedition to the Ohio valley to protect the settlers from Indians but more from the English.. Clark was an excellent choice for the subject of a painting. This is the secret Patrick Henry document.

This is one the first sketches I did of the scene from my concept of the soldiers. It is very dark, the figures coming out of the water and darkness--into the light. This is whatthe client approved and what i used to pose the reenactors, we referred to this throuought the day.

After I had all my reference photography completed, i assembled the figures into this image. Very time consuming process and was necessary in order to make this piece successful in the large painting. Of course I changed some of the figures as i went along, including taking another set of reference photos with 2 more reenactors--yes in the water again.

Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock
I had been looking for a story of a little boy in the Civil War, it seemed like a contrast to life is supposed to be about. I studied the drummer boy stories in many of the publications of the time period and most of the stories ended in death. The boys were not armed and went into battle, but were sent off the field when fighting began. I found the story of the Little Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock from Frdericksburg Virginia's first major battle in December 1862. Robert Henry Hendershot from the 8th Michigan was the Drummer boy that was dragged into national fame by the newspaper man Horace Greely of the New York tribune. A poster boy for the Northern Army was his jjob and he did the part well.

I wanted to show the boy on the Fredericksburg skyline playing his drum, letting the town know that devestation was coming and he was the prophet. This is the graphite study for the final painting.
I did not use a model for this piece.
More sketches below...

I found a wealth of research and wading through people's opinion in history is painful. Although i see what they may see, i look for the human spirituality in all of my subjects, what the almighty is doing in their lives and those around them. You will the divine is many life and death struggles. how man is preserved in spirit, but not necessarily in their body in thet they perish.

This was the oil study, with a live model. I found this 12 year-old young man through a re-enactor's group in Fredericksburg, he is 16 now. This study actually became the final art for the print I released in a reasonably small size. I had begun the canvas and was convinced that the market for art was too soft to invest in a large piece--24 x 36. The unfinished canvas is in the back of my studio, waiting for a change in our country's financial condition.

This is where the upper crossing was across from Chatham, Lacy's house in 1862. I can feel the cold when Hendershot played his drum non-stop till all the soldiers were thoroughly tapped out.