As an artist and longtime resident of the Washington, DC area, I have painted public city parks and gardens over several decades. Because urban parks hold and reveal the history of neighborhoods, I painted tableaux of human and monument presence in parks of Washington, DC and Baltimore. Conditions of human displacement, lack of funding, viral epidemics and extreme heat have made clear the continuing need for planning and maintenance of public, neighborhood parks and gardens.
About Rhapsody in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park
Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, between 15th and 16th Streets NW, Washington, DC contains a stunning thirteen basin fountain and reflecting pool. I revisited this urban park in Columbia Heights to paint on site during the summer of 1994. Bounded by stone walls, the park is a National Historic Landmark and part of the Meridian Hill Historic District. In 2022, I donated Rhapsody to Washington Parks and People, headed by Steve Coleman, Executive Director and President. It is on display at the Josephine Butler Parks Center, across from the park. My donated painting, Concert in Meridian Hill / Malcolm X Park and Rhapsody celebrate the vital role that urban parks play in the welfare of neighborhood residents.
“People and the Urban Park” 2001,
the Josephine Butler Parks Center,
Washington, DC.
Summer Concert, Meridian Hill/Malcolm X
Park, Washington, DC, 2001. Watercolor
on paper, 72 x 45 inches, donated to the
Josephine Butler Parks Center, 2004
About Logan Circle Trilogy
Guided by my interest in urban parks, I explored Logan Circle in Northwest Washington, DC during urban renewal in 1995. Logan Circle Trilogy is the first of nine large scale paintings I completed in the late ’90’s. From sketches and photographs in parks on site in Washington, DC and Baltimore, I orchestrated images of people facing dramatic change and displacement. I presented results of human battles for space on an operatic scale with highly saturated watercolor in the tradition of Social Realism. My large scale paintings of public, urban parks have been exhibited regionally and are owned by private and public institutions. I now seek permanent homes for the large scale paintings of public, urban parks displayed on this website. See my contact information for purchase, acquisition or exhibition.
Logan Circle Park, in Northwest DC, is an urban, residential, roundabout park. I encountered human life pulsing around the equestrian monument of Union Army Major General John A. Logan in the center of the park. With compacted imagery, I suggested the disorientation of high-end residential development upon the lives of many neighborhood people in the late 1990’s. This historic neighborhood, with elegant homes of the city’s post-Civil War wealthy elite, had suffered declines after middle class flight to the suburbs in the 1950’s and uprisings of 1968. By 1999, entrepreneurs had invested in Victorian mansions surrounding the circle and were rehabilitating distressed town homes in fringe areas. Few people could afford expensive rents in new apartments or luxury condominiums under construction.
From my onsite sketches and photographs, I spliced different views of General Logan on horseback with relief imagery at the base of the monument in Logan Circle Trilogy. I interwove human figures with slices of the monumental sculpture undergoing machine maintenance by the National Park Service. Living figures pressed against the foreground spill the urgency of neighborhood upheaval into the viewer’s dimensional space.
About Men Sitting
While sketching in Logan Circle, I witnessed a daily battle for occupancy in the public park. Residents of mansions surrounding the park called for removal of park visitors they considered troublesome. With permission, I photographed and depicted a recent African immigrant who meets the viewer’s gaze directly. A man takes refuge on the park benches, drinks from a container, and reads the Washington Post. Because our public monuments are symbols of allegiance, I juxtaposed the gestures of men in the two reliefs at the monument base with lived reality of men on the ground. More than 150 years after the Civil War, Union Army Major General John A. Logan plots Civil War strategy in an unlikely gathering in one relief. The same general takes a senatorial oath of office in another imagined gathering in the opposite relief.
About Man Walking Dogs
In Man Walking Dogs, I painted a well outfitted Black man walking two collared dogs in front of the bronze equestrian statue of Union Army Major General John A. Logan in Northwest Washington, DC. In the background, I depicted a full view of the Civil War equestrian monument, one of sixteen in the city, just ten blocks from the White House. In the relief on the south side of the pedestal, a female allegorical figure holds a shield of war and a sword.
About Women Preparing
With florid color, I presented multiple views of Black women in a collage of Logan Circle architecture. The women gather to prepare for a bus trip to their place of worship while raising grandchildren and, during the week, cleaning the homes of wealthy households in DC’s Northwest neighborhoods. By 1999, massive renovation of the Victorian and Romanesque Logan Circle mansions and nearby neighborhood properties had forced displacement of lower income residents. Did women, like those in Women Preparing, find ways to retain ownership of homes long held by generations of families?
About Woman Tending
To demonstrate care and daily use by residents of the Logan Circle neighborhood, I positioned two white women near the base of Civil War General Logan’s equestrian monument. In one relief at the monument base, a female figure holds a laurel wreath as a symbol of peace in the middle ground of the painting. Posing in gardening gear, one women tends to the lawn of the circular park maintained by the National Park Service. Her companion poses with a dog held against her chest and shoulder.
About Study of People
By sketching on site in Logan Circle Park in the late 1990’s, I found a measure of acceptance by park inhabitants. In my studio, I also used photographs, taken with permission, to create a composite, panoramic portrait of four park occupants. A man rests with a child enfolded in his arms like a flower, a woman smokes, two men sit in separate observance on park benches. Quiet personal renewal, as well as social interactions, are possible when city parks are well funded, well maintained, and accessible.
About Man Tending Child
Man Tending Child portrays a moment of concentrated care given by an adult male to his child in a city garden. Behind them, a nearby bronze statue reflects a similar gesture of tender fathering.
About Man Panhandling
I painted three views of a Black man panhandling at the base of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument. After protests in 2017, the monument was permanently removed from pubic display by the Baltimore City Council. My painting remembers the vast social and political divisions within Maryland, a slave holding state that did not secede from the Union. With a Southern grasp on his cup, Man Panhandling demands attention.