In 1992, I was commissioned to create three paintings for my fourth Captain Morgan Original Spiced Rum national advertising campaign to appear in magazines, billboards, and point of purchase promotions. Since I retained all other reproduction rights, I decided to release these as prints in our Studio Shop.

Gosh, the company I keep! This past weekend in St. Augustine, FL, I was selected as a 2022 International Pirate Hall of Fame inductee (the first artist to receive that nomination). As this is only the second class of inductees, this is quite an honor. The awards are presented to those persons who have advanced and contributed to the historical significance and presence of the Golden Age of Piracy.

500 nominations are accepted each year and narrowed down to 30 names, then the Review Committee selects 10 to be inducted into the year’s roster. Other members include; Edward Teach, Samuel Bellamy, Errol Flynn, Henry Avery, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Johnny Depp.

Here's another addition to my little collection of paintings completed on my property. I painted it at midday in two sessions with an additional fifteen minute studio tweak.

Taking the Whydah, was included in the History Channel episode, Beyond Oak Island: Return to the Whydah! which aired on January 24. The painting, originally commissioned for National Geographic Magazine, depicts Sam Bellamy and his boarding party taking possession of the Whydah from Captain Prince in 1717.

My recent painting, Take the Long View, has been juried as a Finalist in the Art Renewal Center's 16th International Salon Competition in the Imaginative Realism category. This is the tenth sequential year my work had been involved in this worldwide competitive art selection.

Two graphite drawings I created for a special edition of Raymond E. Feist's Faerie Tale will be part of the "Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration" exhibition at the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI. September 24, 2022 - January 8, 2023.

Other works I've created for books by Feist and other popular authors can be found here.

A recent painting that fits the season -- this is an interior spread for "The Captive" by Robert Stallman, to be published by Centipede Press.

This depicts my imagined scene of Henry Morgan dictating a letter to the President of Panama demanding payment to prevent 'their' sacked port city of Portobello from being set fire. I imagined part of the city already burning, hence everyone laughing. Inspired by Ilya Repin's painting, "The Reply of the Zaporozhain Cossack", writing to the Turkish Sultan.

In 1979, I did a series of mass market covers for books by Robert Stallman. Centipede Press has bought the rights to this series and hired me to do the covers again. I reread the story and am still happy with the original concept for the first book, The Orphan. However, the publisher wants a wraparound dust jacket with art extending to the dust flaps. I made a new oil painting for a double spread frontis illustration.

This is an oil rendition of one of Sarasota's Gulf Coast beaches.