Marc Castelli | Downrigging 2025

MARC CASTELLI / Mules Feet and Dead Man’s Pennies
October 25 – November 30

COLLECTORS’ PREVIEW & RECEPTION
Saturday, October 25, 11-2 PM

Castelli Downrigging Events / 113 South Cross Street:
Friday, October 31 / 5-7:30 pm, Artist Reception
Saturday, November 1 / 10am – 5pm
Artist Talks: Saturday, November 1, 10am & 1pm
Sunday, November 2 / 11am – 3pm

Marc Castelli’s annual exhibition is a Chesapeake tradition. It has become synonymous with the Sultana Education Foundation’s Downrigging Weekend /October 31- November 2. Now in its 25th year, the festival is one of the largest annual tall ship gatherings in North America.

Castelli’s 2025 exhibition and all events will take place in our 113 S. Cross Street location.

Please email or call Carla Massoni if you wish to schedule a private
appointment: info@massoniart.com / 410-708-4512

By the Dawn’s Early Light 2025 Print Image Only available through The Finishing Touch

An Eel – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

I spent 24 days earlier last year on a boat engaged in eeling. I had not spent a lot of time with eelers so I jumped at the invitation to go out with some watermen, I have known and worked with for many years. I found a painting of him from eleven years ago. It had been such a long time since working with Donny that I gave it to him. Being able to do so means a lot to me and to the men and their families. His mother, Patsy Higgs, was one of the waterwomen that Lila Line wrote about in her book, Waterwomen. Sometimes after spending a day with Donny, I’d go back to his and his mother’s house and find Patsy in her kitchen picking crab.

She had a table with a stainless-steel top on it. We’d talk and I would give her photos of Donny and the crew at work. Years ago, she asked for a painting of her dog, a Saint Bernard, named Sable. I did it gladly and gave it to her. Sadly, Patsy passed away last year. I went to the funeral service and sat on the sinner’s bench at the back of the church. She was such a wonderfully giving mother, an amazing grandmother who at one time was a very hard-working waterwoman who fished alongside her men in all manner of weather. She then had to leave the water to raise her grandchildren. Donny never graduated and quit school to work the water. He has had his TFL since his teens. To me his TFL is like a PhD in marine biology, marine meteorology, and seamanship. His water borne education is priceless. Such empirical knowledge is often discredited or trivialized. He is one hell of a gill netter, turtle, and eel potter who is also a very good trotliner for crabs. And a man of few words. I have also culled oysters alongside him. This day of eeling starts at 3:45 am and is over by 9 or 10 am. I anticipate rejoining the guys this spring. My job is stacking baited pots and then passing the pots to the crewman as he puts them back on the trotline to be set back over board. Many folks cringe when I mention eels. Personally, I am creeped out by snakes. Eels, I find fascinating because they are usually in one place, the water. I stand and watch them in the live box as they swim until my back gets sore. They curl, weaving over and under each other while casting shadows on others. They rise to look about in the sunlight flooding underneath the canopy and silently withdraw down into the depths of the live box. I have hundreds of photos of them doing this. I am just not quite ready to draw them out to paint them. Very complicated layers of refracted light, and shadows. In this day of information overload, I find it incredible that so little is still unknown about them. In this small watercolor is an eel that flung itself out of the live box and tried to escape back to the water through a scupper. It is rare to catch one in such detail as they are constantly in motion. Being out in the sunlight on the deck in the back of the boat gave me a chance to take several photos. After fishing, rebaiting, and setting around 400 pots or so we return to the creek where we put out the eels into a live box with heavy screened sides. The screening allows for water to pass through the box and for them to feed on whatever the water brings them. From there they will be sold when the men have market. The market of late has been from Connecticut where they are used for bait.

And They’re Off
Watercolor
15” x 22”

One very foggy morning while walking the dock on Long Cove just off the Chester River I saw these pilings with lines. Something about the quite reflections in the caul-like light prodded me to take some quick shots before the skipper brought the boat to the bulk head. That wake would have torn the reflections and distorted them. The pilings and lines that defined the empty slips made me think of the starting gates used at a race track.

We were power dredging for oysters down bay, out of Neavitt Creek. The light did some amazing things that day which had me hooting and hollering much to their amusement and slight confusion until I pointed out what was happening around all of us. For a few moments the angle of the just risen sun turned the normal coke bottle blue green winter waters to a deep emerald, green. Needless to say, I took a lot of photos of the water during that short-lived moment. They just shook their heads and went back to the work. I get a laugh when I go back through the photos and see them with their bemused grins. I believe that if given enough time to see the changes that happen around them while they work they might be just as caught up in the beauty and grace of the moment as I am. Most watermen will sometimes tell me of such things that they see. Some have even taken to using their cell phones to capture sunrises, fish in nets, oysters on the cull board, crabs from one run of the trotline and share them with me. What first caught my eye was the bright slivers of their faces as they squinted into the unfiltered glare from the sun while they waited for the first grab of the dredge to come aboard.

At the Corner of Sunrise and Dawn
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Sometimes the picture is more about the light than it is about the actual subject. The sun has just broken the horizon of the Sassafras River shoreline. The early sky is dark and gray. The sun is still low enough for parts of the shoreline to cast shadows on other parts of itself. The poles and net lit by the sun are made more stark by the darks of the background. They are illuminated by the direct sun light slamming into anything that stands out and above the water. I find painting net tedious at best. It is one more element among others that I find difficult to draw and paint in this expansive subject of watermen.

Avoiding net is not constructive. Making a mishmash of it is something a waterman would poke fun. Other elements I have “problems” with are flannel, scale fish, camouflage, and grasses, eel pots, and plastic bushel baskets. One would think that with all of these difficult to portray textures that I would have found some other subject by now. Nope. The difficulty lies in the tedious nature of the subject. They are part and parcel of the overall subject of men who are their own bosses, working with their hands on the water while out in all manner of conditions to harvest seafood. So, I paint net when necessary. There will always be something difficult to not only draw out but also to paint. Many years ago, I used to tell my students that if it didn’t scare the hell out of you then it isn’t worth your time. I am deathly afraid of becoming too slick with my technique. I have to keep scaring the hell out of myself.

August Afternoon/ Tangier Island – SOLD
Watercolor
30” x 22”

For six years our son, Ken, lived and worked on Tangier Island. He was the first artist in residence. The program was through the newly opened museum on the island. We, Phyllis, and I enjoyed our visits with him over several years. I would go alone to oyster, scrape for crabs or haul crab pots with Tangiermen. These would be watermen Ken had got to know and his word was enough to get me through the door. I was no longer a tourist.

Such a distinction on such an island reachable only by boat is important. While many knew I was Ken’s father most did not know my name and I was almost greeted as, “Keeen’s dad.” After a day on the water, I would do a walk-about while treasuring the late afternoon light that came unobstructed from across the Chesapeake Bay. Islanders would wave as they passed by in their golf carts leaving me alone to enjoy the rest of the day. Ken once described Tangier to me in this way, “If you aren’t comfortable with who you are when you are alone then Tangier isn’t for you.” Most islanders are insular not insulting. To me this picture has a lot of Tangier in it. I get caught up in the bright whites of the paint used on the crab houses, pilings, and boats. And the water, always the water.

A Blue Bird Day – SOLD
Watercolor
19” x 30”

We were putting out the catch in Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman Island after a day of power dredging for oysters when Jeff Harrison pointed out the Stephanie III. She was just pulling away from the bulkhead after putting out their catch. He told me that the owner was a head boat operator and a relative of Tyrone Meredith. Through my friendship with Tyrone, I have been able to connect with several black watermen. I took a chance and yelled across to the owner that Tyrone said,” Hey and that I should talk with him about oystering.” It was then I was able to connect with James, “Buck” Lynch. Buck is an owner operator of his boat the Stephanie III. In the late spring to the late summer months, he operates a head boat out of Kent Island.

From October 1^st to the end of March he switches over to oystering. Early in the season he runs it as a power dredger and when the oysters thin out using that gear he switches over to hand tonging. The gentleman in this watercolor is Bobby Washington. He is 72 years old. Bobby and James “Buck” Lynch have been oystering together for 4 or so years. Buck is 74. I am also 74. And I am so very damn lucky to be able to go out on the water and work alongside these two watermen. They take good care of me. I work as hard as I can to help with the culling to speed along their day and share in the physical labor of moving bushels around the boat and also with putting out the day’s catch. Watching the three of us septuagenarians putting out the day’s haul of oysters can be quite comical. But, I digress. Bobby is an amazing hand tonger. Once he gets in the zone he can pile up a cull board with some of the most amazing oysters. He’s very good at it. At first I was a tad concerned about him. We’d be on the boat going out to the oyster bar of the day and he’d be talking to what I assumed was himself. He was talking, making comments, answering what seemed like his own questions and such. I wondered if he was alright. But I kept my thoughts to myself. It wasn’t until later that I noticed he a Bluetooth device in his ear and he was actually talking with other people. Whew! Here he is boarding the tongs with what the watermen call a “lick” of oysters. These will then be culled for the three-inch legal keepers. Anyway… It was from this beautiful day of blue skies, bright light that followed an amazing sunrise on the Tred Avon River that this painting was pulled together. I had not painted a picture of Bobby yet and this day gave me so many elements with which to work. Such a day is called a “bluebird day.” I also add “calendar days” to the description. Not every day is such a day. Some can be brutally cold, with winds against tide.

By the Dawn’s Early Light
Giclee printed with an Epson P9000 using Ultra Chrome HDX inks on Epson smooth art Paper
image size 24″ x 16.5″
Paper size 27″ x 20″
$800 – Only available through The Finishing Touch

Working with this young waterman for over 10 years while he, we, fished pound nets gave me many opportunities to see some of the most amazing things. He had the deepest well of patience with me and my questions and my need to help with the work. The depth of his local and long-term knowledge is built around such a traditional occupation as fishing pound nets. This morning had him working the net in the incredible yellow back lit fog on the water and the river bank.

The light this day gave me many amazing shots from which to work. I have often pondered doing a show of paintings from just one day. This could be that one day. It has taken me a few years since taking this picture to feel confident enough to attempt such watercolor. I feel that I managed to get the painting close to how I felt that morning. I have been given many opportunities over the 35 years to be out on the water and see many sights that continue to inspire. It is an addiction for me. I feel the compulsion to be out on the water two or three days a week and see what is out there. To be a part of it and come home with a record of the day and be honestly bone tired. It is never the same. While working in the studio at home I often wonder what it is the watermen are seeing and that I’m not. Wish I had a clone I could trust to resonate to the same things I would. What then would Phyllis do with two of me?

Captain Montro Wright – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

In his eighties Captain Montro is the oldest head boat captain on Kent Island. His boat the Shirley B. III is the bright yellow one you might see heading up the Bay from Kent Island or headed south down Bay through Kent Narrows to other waters. He has been a waterman/head boat captain for many years. My painting portraits of these men has become a special endeavor for me. It was at a meeting with Senator Cardin and the individuals appearing in the Emmy Award winning documentary, Water’s Edge; Black Watermen of the Chesapeake that I first heard just how few black watermen are left from Kent Island.

This group and their families were the backbone for much of the seafood industry that flourished not only on Kent Island but in the Chesapeake Bay. Capt. Montro knows me from having seen me on the docks where the headboats pick up their customers during the summer months. I have been spending a lot of time with my friend Tyrone Meredith who captains and owns the Island Queen II. He told me that Capt. Montro might not be taking out groups much longer as he is getting older. Realizing this I asked permission to take his picture standing next to his boat. Which he gave with a bemused grin. His son operates his own head boat out of Kent Narrows by the name of “Off Da’ Hook.” Many of these head boats were and are family-owned businesses. I am going to try and manage a ride with the captain this Spring before time overtakes us all. It’s one thing to snatch a picture of him on the dock but another more important one to picture him in his element.

Crossing the Mirror – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

Sometimes the open waters of the rivers, coves and bays of the Chesapeake can be a smooth as glass. The horizon disappears into the sky. I often wonder if the view from an airplane looking down on such a sight as a boat on such waters would seem as if the men and their boat were afloat in the sky. It has to be quite a sight. It takes two boats to work a pound net. A skiff or bateau for working the net to move the fish closer to the bigger boat.

The fish will then be dipped up and emptied on to a cull board on the larger workboat. The fish are alive and any bycatch that has no value and is too small to keep then goes back over board. Alive. On this day the waterman is bringing the bateau back to the workboat, after fishing the crib and putting the net back down. I have been graced with many days on the water and the luck to see such sights. Being there and having the awareness to keep looking and taking pictures enables me to find these pictures, and draw them out.

Drifting in the Dungeon – SOLD
Watercolor
30” x 22”.

Gill netting for rockfish in the winter months means setting out in the very, very early hours of the day. To “better” manage the fishery the regulations state that you can’t set before 3:30 in the morning and you can’t haul before 6:30. And that you must stay on station, meaning you can’t go home and then come back out to fish your gear. Also, you can’t anchor the net either. The gill net must be used as drift net. All of these regulations are reflections of earlier practices. Sometimes because of where the fish are you set in the shipping channel and everyone has to be on their toes to watch for the much larger ships using the same waters.

At the time Miss Kelley was owned by a good friend, Dave Kirwan. Dave is the second waterman I started out with 35-years ago. Our children went to school and graduated together; we have shared dinners. One summer we picked crab when the buyer put a 7-bushel limit on the crabbers. We had one bushel over the limit so around 11:30 that morning we sat in Dave’s backyard and feasted on steamed. One year I had painted a watercolor of Dave teaching his Joey how to triangulate so he could locate his line of crab pots. I titled it, “The Handing Down.” Dave’s mother June came to the gallery with her credit card out and wanted to buy that painting then and there. Unfortunately for her it had been sold. I felt so bad for her that I had prints made for her, Dave, and the boys. When she passed away I was asked to attend the funeral. Dave’s wife, Kelley came to me and took me up to the front of the chapel to see June. Kelley pointed out that she and Dave had placed the print in the casket with her. I still get a tear in my eye when I remember that. Dave and I both find it somewhat amusing that when I ever I call up to go crabbing or fishing the forecast is for small craft advisories. It would seem that my timing always has a lot of wind in it. He has taught me a lot about fishing, crabbing, regulations, and the laws. I realized early on in my voyage of getting out on the boats that I could not just sit out of the way and take pictures all the day long. I needed the conversation and how and where I could I lend a hand to make their days shorter. This lending a hand eventually enabled me to get closer for more in-depth photographs from which to paint. He is one of the first to share with me the concerns, issues, knowledge, and traditions of the watermen. Anyway. This image is from a winter gill net trip many years ago. I have always been fascinated by old school lanterns. It was the light receding to the darker shapes of net boxes that initially caught my eye. The delicate limning of the net in the light at the back of the boat was a perfect foil for the darks. The recession into the dark required many subsequent glazes. The lantern spilled it’s light on and around the deck while casting shadows. Painting is very similar to human relationships. Both require a lot of readjusting. Especially if the painting/relationships prove worthy of such effort.

Eels at Dawn – SOLD
Watercolor
22” X 15”

Not only do I have the good fortune to be welcomed on this boat but also that I have earned a spot. Eeling is a process that once started has very few moments of stoppage. Jeff Baker would take the hauled pot from the skipper Donny Parry, untie the front, empty the eels and bait into a clam crate from which the eels would wriggle their way out of and into the water of the live box. If the eel was too large to escape from the crate Jeff would then let the eel out of the pot into the live box. He would then re-bait and retie the front of the pot. I took rebaited eel pots and stacked them in the boat to be reset after the trotline had been fished.

If the winds were up and the lay of the trotline had us cross tide and wind while we hauled pots I was told to be careful and not to stack them three or four high as the roll could dump the pots over board. An eel pot cost ten dollars and the time making one. Such pitching and rolling could also cause enough waves in the live box to allow eels to surf their way up and out of the box. They would land on the floor around the feet of the men as they worked. Escapees would then start making their way to any dark hole they could find. Retrieving them would involve one of us scooping them up using a fine mesh dip net and returning the truant eel to the live box. There is an almost unstoppable rhythm to running the trotline and such escapees can become an interruption. In more fair conditions, I could stack the pots three or four high, especially if we were fishing a total set. 550 pots can take up a lot of room. Eeling is as muddy if not more so than oystering. I figured out how to time everything I needed to do in the time span of hauling, emptying, and rebaiting four pots. That meant I had to be quick about taking photographs of things I had noticed while stacking pots. Oddly enough I treasure the moments when the work gets done fast without obvious communication. Sometimes the lay would be at such an angle that I could use the just risen sun in the background. Many times, the direction we would be using to head out into the bay or the set would make it difficult to photograph and incorporate the full moon or the sunrise. I am not one of those photographers with his little boat that only comes out just after sunrise on a calendar day to take pictures of watermen at work and then go home when the light is no longer just right. I want to be out there through the full day of work and the arc of the sun. I believe as did Edward Curtis, in being able to portray these men in all conditions as they work through the day. This morning the sun was in the exact place for me to use it as a backdrop. Donny was getting ready to haul an eel pot and the colors and light in the water were great. I used to hook my feet into whatever I could find and then lay over the side of the boat with my camera trying to get this angle just right. I’m almost too old for such gymnastics. My newest camera has a foldout screen that allows me to lay it over the side and shoot the pictures from a better angle. I just have to keep a third eye out of any waves rolling up the side towards me. So far so good.

Four Pair
Watercolor
22” x 30”

The painting is all about the sky. The title refers to the four pairs of hand tongs in the racks on this workboat. There are different types, with various purposes and sizes of heads for several different conditions. Some are small with sharp teeth for prying oysters from hard bottom. Believe me those teeth can be very sharp.

I cut my ear on such a set while moving a bushel of oysters. I bled all over some oysters before the cold stopped the bleeding. Some heads are straight across for use on softer bottom enabling a larger grab or “lick” as they are called. The largest I have seen are 50 inches across. The length of handles, called shafts can differ also. Shorter ones are for working shallow bottom while the longer shafts are obviously for working on deeper bottom. Tide will also dictate water depth. In this watercolor I liked using the shafts as a screen through which the viewer can see the sky. It was the dramatic sky of that early day with the biscuit top clouds that initially caught my eye.

Go Home – SOLD
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Somedays the striped bass or rockfish are too big to keep. Recently I heard that many gill net fishermen had been catching large numbers of very large rockfish. Too large to keep. Such big fish in numbers can tear up the nets. Despite this being a mixed blessing, it is still a great sign. The older the rockfish the more fecund it is. This painting is derived from an older photograph taken when the state had decreed a two-day 500 lb. limit of rockfish to the boat.

If you weren’t out there those two days then someone else caught a portion of the seasonal quota. That meant you had to be out there in order to try and earn a living during the winter months while trying to catch rockfish with drift/gill nets. Winter on the Bay can be quite beautiful and unpleasant and raw. The average depth of the bay is 21 feet. Bitter cold will drive the fish into the deeper and warmer water of the shipping channels. This means the men are out there in dark hours of early morning while very large commercial vessels are transiting the shipping channels. Shipping channels are on the average 50 feet deep and 800 feet wide in Maryland. The deepest point in the bay is 174 feet. Sometimes in the freezing temperatures the net has to be salted the night before to keep it from freezing and then resalted when it is shipped back on board. If the net freezes it can go overboard in large solid clumps and tangles. The law requires that all rock fish that have been caught except the obviously small ones must be measured. The slot for measuring is 18 inches up to 31 inches. Anything outside the slot has to go back overboard. Anyway… This watercolor is of a good friend of mine returning a rockfish to the water. I liked the way they look against the winter gray sky and the tension of the space between his hand the head of the fish.

Harvesting
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Over the 35 years or so of accompanying watermen as they follow the water I have been fortunate to do so in the company of more than one generation. This continuity speaks volumes about the traditions of watermen families. I have oystered and haul seined with David Edwards on and off for many years. Back then it was with David and his brother John. They worked out of their boat the Miss Christy. There was a couple of times I worked with them and their father, Bill. This story is going to get interconnected so be ready to follow the trail.

Bill was the brother of Charles Edwards a fish buyer from Rock Hall. The families lived for quite a while in Piney Neck (long Cove). David’s grandmother was the sister of Stanley Vansant a boat builder from Piney Neck just off the Chester River. She was his and John’s baby sitter before they moved down Bay. You should know that Capt. Stanley was the model for the bronze statue of the hand tonger on the bulkhead in Rock Hall and the one at Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. It was created by the noted sculptor and good friend of my family’s, Ken Herlihy. It was Ken and his wife Pat who first introduced us to the Eastern Shore. I have enjoyed such interconnectivity on this shore for many years and I treasure being a small thread in the fabric of such stories. In this picture is David who is culling for his son Tucker who is hand tonging. Tucker is quite religious hence the name of his boat, Revelation. He bought and finished the boat himself. David would fit into a space opposite from me and almost underneath Tucker so that I could work from the other side of the cull board. It gave me more space and enabled me to take pictures. These two men are most generous and patient with this old man. This situation was providential for me and my fascination with generations working together on the boat. David and I would talk about books, old television shows and movies while culling. He’d tell me stories about a lot of the same watermen we both know. They have told me that I would be welcome anytime and to just give them a call when I’m able to join them. When the day was over, and while we three stood in the parking lot, Tucker would give a prayer of thanks and hope for guidance. I need a lot of that.

He’ll Crab No More – SOLD
Watercolor
22” x 15”

For me there is a somber note to this painting. My good friend Wayne can no longer walk across the parking lot let alone do the work necessary to trotline for crabs without having to stop and catch his breath. COPD is a horrible affliction. He had been slowing down a lot over the past two or three years. But the summer of 2023 was to be his last crab season. He and I get along really well. Not being able to spend two or three days a week on his boat as we would right all the wrongs of the world, leaves a huge hole in my life.

Spending yet another day in paradise with him was a lot of fun. We still talk a lot on the phone and I try to get down to see him in his house as much as I can. During the days on his boat, I would take a lot of pictures of many little things. There is something about being there for the duration of a full day that lets you see all of the gear and such in the different lights of the passing sun. I had been collecting those autumn leaves as they came up in the dipper with the crabs. I was thinking of dropping them into a basket of crabs when the light had reached the interior of the basket. I saw them on the stool where I had left them and took the picture not knowing that this summer would be the last crab season we’d work together. Hence the title.

Islander, Tangier Island
Watercolor
22” x 30”

This is Wheldon Pruitt, from a long-time family of Tangier Island. It was through my son Ken, who had been living on the island, that I got know a few of the island’s watermen. Ken came to the island through the offices of good friends and collectors of my work, Neil and Susan Kaye. He started out as an artist in residence, worked with Neil and Susan to set up and maintain the museum on the island. Eventually he ended up doing a lot of odd jobs to make money. On this day I remember waking up at 3:30, getting dressed in some seriously warm clothes and boots, gathered up my oilskins, walked in the dark down to the fuel dock so Wheldon could pick me up in his skiff to ride out to his crab house on the creek where he kept his workboat, the Trudy P..

From there we would leave for the day’s work of fishing crab pots. In this painting it is very early in the morning with a hint of dawn barely separating the horizon from what would be an increasingly threatening sky. Tangier Sound can be a very rough body of water from which to wrest a living. In this picture he is watching for a crab pot to come up on his winder. The only light is from a pole in the stern of his small deadrise workboat. I was taken by this light limning his bent body as he works. Such opportunities do not linger long. Compositionally I was fortunate to have just a few other areas lit by the same light. For me there is something about the anonymity of this figure out on very rough seas working with his mate while they fished their pots. One of the pots came up with so many crabs in it that they asked me to take a picture of them pointing at the pot before they emptied it. Great smiles. This day they caught so many crabs that they ran out of bushel baskets. To keep the crabs in one place they had to create a space up against the back of the cabin to put the crabs using full baskets as a bulkhead. It became quite a pile as the day went on. It was a rough wet day full of wind against tide. Sometimes because of the way the pots were in a line we were side on to the wind and waves. Once they had fished all of their pots we took off for Crisfield across the sound. That ride was one hell of a roller coaster. I have never once wondered or worried about the seamanship of any waterman with whom I have worked. Nor have I ever been worried about being out there in some seriously nautical weather. Something I experienced many years ago taught me that worrying about such things is counterproductive. I do admit to being very careful about the men with whom I go out the waters. We had to take a different approach to Crisfield as the wind and its fetch made using the normal channel dangerously rough. Wheldon took Fishing Creek past Cedar Island Wildlife Management Area and then moved up through the narrow channel of Broad Creek to enter the Annemessex River to Crisfield. Local knowledge always pays. Once there it took a while to put out the number of crabs. When they finished and were paid off, Wheldon then took on a load of brand-new bushel baskets to take back to the island and deliver to waiting Tangiermen. That trip back was also quite rough but brightly lit by a brilliant blue sky. I will treasure every bit of it and the memories sparked by the days in my photos. Remembering them while painting brings back the day.

Islander, Tilghman
Watercolor
17.5” x 29.5”

This is Johnny Kinnamon, 87 years old at the time. He and I have become close friends over the years. In this painting he is waiting for the buyer to tell him what his crabs are worth that day. I am very fortunate to have shared many days and hours with him for the past 7 or so years. In this image we had just finished a morning of trotlining for crabs, while talking, joking, sharing stories about our families as he attempts to teach me about the business of following the water. He is a most remarkable human being. I am honored to be a friend of his.

We have travelled down bay to the Northern Neck of Virginia to stay with customers of his and his son’s boat building business. These are longtime customers who have become close friends. At Johnny’s age he doesn’t like to drive long distances so I get to drive while tagging along to share great meals of crabs, fish, oysters, and other great local food; fascinating conversations; drives around the Neck and just plain soaking up an amazing amount of generosity and hospitality, history, and culture. Johnny is quite the celebrity among the watermen down that way. He and his son J.C. have built over 200 deadrise workboats on Tilghman Island, Maryland. Many of which have been commissioned by watermen down Virginia way. His memory is like a steel trap. He can tell you who bought what boat and when and where it has been. He can also tell you about boats he did not build but who did and who has worked them. I have learned a lot from him. His involvement in the island’s St. John’s Chapel and the Tilghman Watermen Museum has been crucial. He is concerned that some who have moved to the island do not know that where they are is more than a quaint place to build a big home in which to retire. Most have very little or no understanding about where they are, or what the history and traditions are. To many islanders these “come-heres,” “blow-ins” or “transplants” seem to have little or no respect for any of that. Johnny was born and grew up on the island. He is an islander. Except for a stint in the U. S. Navy, he has never lived anywhere else. I was recently asked to say a few words about him at this year’s blessing of the fleet on Tilghman. He and I were described as partners in crime. We’re planning on crabbing again this coming season. Ask many of the women on the island about him and they will nearly to a person remark about his ever so blue eyes.

It’s All About the Mud
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Last winter I had the chance to go oystering on, Moonraker, out of Bozman with Jason Baker from Kent Island. Jason’s family have been on the island since the 1600s. There was John Clopein the hand tonger, Jason culling, singing songs in his stentorian voice, George Lee who has such a thick accent I could understand about 5 words whenever he talked to me. Jason asked me if I understood everything George would say and I said maybe about 4 or 5 words. He laughed and said that’s better than most.

That’s 4 people on the boat! Crowded but efficient. Jason asked the crew, “What is the rule?.” They all answered,” Do not let the board get full up! “It doesn’t take me long to understand the process of the boats on which I work. In spite of the nearly universal sameness of the work each boat is different and each crew and owner has their own way. This day we were on small, snappy “cat tongue” oysters wrapped up in spat and covered in mud. These used to be called “soup oysters” because the only thing they were good for was oyster soup. They were also called “shakers’ because the method for removing the meats was to steam them open and then run them across a shaker to remove the meats which would then drop on to a conveyor belt. There was at one time a Campbells soup plant just outside Chestertown. That was where most of these oysters would have gone if it was still open. This day was especially muddy and it is very hard not to end up wearing it all over one’s clothes, faces and hat. George had it everywhere.

ICE!!! – SOLD
Watercolor
22” x 30”

In the 35 or so years I have worked alongside the watermen and been inspired by them as they work in the ever-changing light, weather and waters of the Chesapeake I have never seen what I saw on January 27th of this year. ICE! I joined Jeff Harrison and Patrick Whewell for a day of handtonging for oysters. It was a bitter cold night before that froze the waters of Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman Island and the waters of several creeks and rivers on the Eastern Shore. Broad Creek was frozen up tighter than a tick’s behind. It took us about half an hour just to get out of Dogwood. Make haste slowly as the Japanese are fond of saying.

A path going out had barely been made by other boats. Combinations of a slight breeze, wave action and tide would open and close up the “channels” made by those who went before us. This made going forward a very slow and tedious process with all eyes open and forward to each side looking for the channels. Eventually we made our way out and up Broad Creek. The purplish sunrise was softly reflected on the ice. It is different from what you would see if it was reflected on open water. I took over 1,000 pictures this day. We could see the running lights of several workboats moving about as we made the turn to head up to an oyster bar called Peanut. We could them milling about as they waited for the sunrise to start work. They were breaking up the ice by carefully running their boats through the thick ice to create a space in which they could work. It was a space bordered by broken sheets of ice. The waters had small bits and pieces of ice that had been chewed up in their wheels. We joined them to maneuver in all manner of loops, circles, lines, and shapes to break up the ice. There must have been around 11 or so workboats of different sizes, shapes, and construction. Some boats are made of fiberglass, others are fiberglass over wood and some are just wood hulls. Hardly anyone sheathes the bottom of their boats with sheets of copper anymore. That was the time-honored way to protect the hull from winter ice. Mother Nature does not discriminate when it comes to damaging boats with ice. Window pane ice is like a very thin sheet of glass. It starts to cut a line in the hull if one runs along the edge of it with enough pressure. We did manage to get our limit that day.

March 31, 2024
Watercolor
22” x 15”

Oyster season runs from October1st to March 31^st. This was a long day of culling and sorting through a lot of oysters “wrapped up “with long thin oysters called snaps and spat. But the boat did get its limit of 24 hand tong bushels. The “well intentioned” Save the Bayers, River Keepers, sports, and recreational fisherman associations (C.C.A.) need to get over their tunnel vision. They might realize what catching 24 bushels in the waning days of the season means for numbers of oysters, the economy, watermen, the public fishery, and the value chain all the way up to the state coffers. It’s a win-win for all stakeholders.

These foundations and associations could move on to more pressing issues like rampant development and resultant poor water quality. These self-deluded “experts” still believe that they can save the bay on the backs of the oyster instead of saving the bay for them. Some still post the outright lie that an oyster can filter 50 gallons a day. They simply shrug their shoulders when cornered and say it helps to motivate their membership. Seeing first-hand this wealth of oysters might temper their droning dislike for the public fishery. Might! Anyway… I was still in my oil skin bibs while wobbling back to my truck at P.T. Hambleton’s on Grace Ck., Bozman. When I looked down and saw this arrangement of bits of snow, a small branch of pine needles and a few oysters. I got out the camera and shot two or three quick pictures of this unasked for nice little arrangement before it went away. I like the tracery of needles and their shadows with the snow.

Mr. Bobby Washington
Watercolor
15” x 22”

Years ago, I did a watercolor of Paul Washington on his boat, Miss Mary, when he was hand tonging on the Chester River. Last year I met his son Bobby when I got the chance to oyster with Buck Lynch on the Stephanie III. Bobby is one of the finest oystermen with whom I have had the opportunity to work. Soft spoken, confident in his skill set, generous, positive and an honor to know. I look forward to crabbing with him this coming season. Buck and Bobby have worked together for four years and have established routines. I just stand out of the way and watch as they invest themselves in the coming day.

We were oystering on Stone Church oyster bar in the Tred Avon. It is on the Oxford side and just down river from the Tred Avon Yacht Club. I am reminded by the fact that I have raced log canoes on that river for 33 years. Seeing it in the fogs, snowfalls and bitter iced cold cloudless days is another dimension to that river that few “locals” ever see. Anyway, that river has some seriously large oysters that can be found on small-boat size natural oyster bars. The smallness of the bar’s size can make it difficult to stay on the oysters when the winds blow, and especially when its wind against tide. One minute the hand tonger is boarding very large oysters on the cull board and the next minute he’s trying to find the same spot only to feel that the boat has moved off the oysters. As frustrating as that seems, you have to realize that a day’s work can be made from such a place. The bar can be in 14 to 16 feet of water one minute and then the boat shears off and then the water is 22 to 24 feet deep. Most hand tongers bring several types of hand tongs with different lengths of shafts. For several “licks” of oysters the depth might be just right. Then in the next moment the waterman could be on his knees inside the boat with just the very ends of the shafts with which to “fluff” up a lick. The rakes may have different types of teeth some sharp and thin for breaking up the hard bottom and prying loose the oysters. This is hard work. Other teeth are thick and rounded for digging out the oysters from sandy or muddy bottom. I have seen, watched, and photographed the faraway look that comes across the hand tongers face while he bounces the rakes up and down, twists the shafts and makes a lick. In the men’s heads they are 14 to 22 feet below the boat listening to the oysters through the rakes and shafts. I did a painting of Lewis Carter last year titled, “I Can Hear Them Singing.” It came close to capturing that other world look in his eyes. He is absorbed in feeling and listening for the oysters under the water. It is as if he has an underwater video screen and can see/feel what he is about to bring up. Anyway… When we would work on the Tred Avon out of Bellevue we would usually be in the right place for the sunrise to be in our faces. For me this is a great opportunity for moments of pure sunlight illuminating the faces, boats, and gear that will cast wonderful shadows.

No Boat is Ever Big Enough
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Oystering in the cold rain and fog is never pleasant. But, you go to work when there is market for your oysters. Conditions like small craft advisory winds or dangerously thick ice will usually keep a waterman at home. There are always some who will try their luck. This small boat with its outboard engine has a small cabin and just enough space in which to work. I have written for years about the decreasing number of watermen through ageing, lack of opportunities, and the expense of starting out. In some cases, it is the lack of interest in physical labor while being one’s own boss that has no attraction.

Recent oyster surveys and harvest reports reflect the fact that creeks and oyster bars have seen record natural recruitment. That is biologist’s term for good spat sets. That means the oyster population is increasing. While the numbers for young watermen are still low they are slowly increasing. I see a lot more initiative from them as they are using more affordable small boats with out-board motors and launching them from trailers. The slip fees are either expensive or there aren’t any open slips to use. These two young men know people who let them use their dock up Neavitt Creek during the oyster season. These two men have figured it out and go out nearly every day that’s fit to work. This day brought border line conditions of rain and the forecast called for increasing winds. The anonymity of the men in their oil skins in the numerous shades of gray, the lack of horizon, and the rain speaks volumes about these men who harvest the oysters that end up on restaurant menus.

No Mystery Here / Mystery
Watercolor
12” x 30”

Log canoes are very tender or “wally.” Having just a centerboard and coupled with some serious over canvassing makes them prone to capsizing. While such an event is dramatic to see one must bear in mind the always present potential for crew injury and breakage to the canoe. Several years ago, it was Mystery #8 (1932) that experienced a capsize while on a “pleasure” sail. It unfortunately resulted in a drowning fatality. The only such death in the over 150 years of the sailing log canoes. The other was a lightning strike that killed a young boy during one of those quick squalls that characterize the Chesapeake in the summer months. On the day of this image, I was crewing up in the eyes of the Jay Dee, doing sail work, bailing, yelling at the young boys who want to sail but seemed reticent about doing their job of bailing, and relaying point of sail instructions from the sail maker, John Jenkins, back to the skipper Dan North. All the while taking photographs.

My years of painting watermen has brought me many opportunities. It seems like a lifetime ago I was commissioned by Vince Leggett, founder and CEO of the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, to paint a portrait of Captains Tyrone and his father Eldridge Meredith. It was Vince who coined the phrase The Black Captains of the Chesapeake. That opened up the door to a group of watermen with whom I had no previous contact. It has since developed into some long-lasting friendships. These would later enable me to open some doors for a documentary producer. Because of my small part in the Emmy Award winning documentary, Water’s Edge, Black Watermen of the Chesapeake (produced and directed by Alexis Aggrey for MPT), I had been invited to attend a meeting with Sen. Cardin, along with a couple of the Black Captains of Kent Island and a few of the scholars from that same film. During the course of the conversation Sen. Cardin asked how many black watermen are still working out of Kent Island. Tyrone answered, maybe 10 or 12. I was surprised at how few remain, given how rich the culture and how deep the history of the African Americans on the island is. He went on to explain that when it came time to divide up the territories involved in the headboat and charter fisheries; the Bay side went to the white captains and the Eastern Shore side went to the Black Captains. Tyrone has since told me that when he was growing up it was always the white watermen and black watermen living next door to each other, that worked on each other’s boats and sold to each other’s seafood businesses. All of this with little or no rancor between them. He tells me that racism was back in the days before him. The water is color blind. Anyway…This low number of watermen alerted me to the fact that I could and should do something to record in my own way some of the living history that is passing right in front of me. Headboats are called this because the owner/captain is usually paid by the head, and sometimes by a group, like from a church. At the moment if all goes as planned a small group of sponsors will designate a fund to be used to purchase all eight and donate them to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. To my knowledge no one has thought to record these men, their boats and their history in such a way. I have started to do portraits of the owner/captains also. I find them friendly, competitive and are men who also oyster, crab and work in other fisheries. They know of me and my work and so far I have been welcome to go out with them on the water. Early on I used to be insulted by the notion that my work was documentary in nature. I still believe that the fishery is alive and thriving albeit on a smaller scale. My work has taken on that character solely because of the years I have devoted to this industry. As of this moment I have completed 1,663 watercolors of the Eastern Shore’s watermen, and 503 watercolors of the log canoes. These numbers do not include the thousands of completed pen and ink drawings of the same subjects. This new subject of the black watermen is important to me especially as it is a group in which I have only recently been welcomed. It is a portion of the nearly 35 years of the larger context, the men who follow the water.

On Willow Bottom / Grays Inn Ck. – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

I am always looking out for an image that speaks of the shoreline along the Eastern Shore. Willow Bottom is a watermen name for just such a river side just outside of Gray’s Inn Creek on the Chester River. It is a good site for trotlining for crabs when north westerly winds make life difficult outside on the river. The sun has just come up highlighting the pine trees’ orange trunks. I have always been challenged by how many colors can you paint a white boat still have it read as white. This boat is tinted with blues, oranges, and light purple. The density of the shoreline vegetation made for a lot of dramatic lights and darks. The sheer size, verticality and dark shapes in the trees act as compositional foils for the white bateau.

Oyster Colors – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

John Clopein and Tyrone Meredith have worked together for several years. Both are long time Kent Island residents. John built his first boat while a younger man. It was something to see. All who know it remember the name, “Hell’s Creation.” During the headboat season John is the mate on Tyrone’s head boat the Island Queen II. This past oyster season John hand tongs on Tyrone’s deadrise workboat the Rosemary Ann. He is one hell of a hand tonger. I won’t cull for him unless someone else is culling with me as John can pile up a cull board in the blink of an eye. Tyrone culls for him and can keep up. I can’t.

Plain and simple I’m just too slow and I try to polish the oysters too much. The saying is, “If the buyer ain’t crying then you’re culling too pretty.” I am proud to admit that no one has ever been ticketed for any oysters I have culled. Pride doth go before the fall. But I am damn careful as I do not want to be excused from a boat for infractions; such as oysters smaller than three inches, too many spat less than three inches on an oyster, or too much cultch which are dead oysters, rocks, or trash. If there are enough of these items in one bushel to fill what is called a 5% cup then the boat owner is liable to get fined or a ticket. If it is just one bushel he may get off with a waring. Fines and penalties are draconian. The day of this painting saw us working up Broad Creek on Mulberry Point. The sky in background became quite dramatic and ominous with its sharply defined looming dark bottom, brilliant white topsides and increasing winds. Some would call it dirty weather. It made for a great background, albeit an alarming one. Tyrone and I looked at each other and almost simultaneously asked each other if he had seen the movie, “The Day After Tomorrow.” A film about the consequences of increasing number of calamitous weather events due to climate change. We kept oystering while keeping a weather eye. The winds came up, the water turned bright yellow green then to an almost dark blue green, the clouds flew overhead and passed on to the south. Not one drop of rain, lightning strike, or peal of thunder. Crazy. I like the brilliant light from behind us that made the clouds and sky even more dramatic while lighting up John with his orange gloves and his bright blue windbreaker and Tyrone in his dusty orange oil skins and gloves. It looked as if they were in the spotlight.

Oystering in the Tethys Sea
Watercolor
22” x 30”

The Tethys Sea was a prehistoric ocean during much of the Mesozoic Era and early-mid Cenozoic Era when the continents as we now know them had yet to be formed. I am reminded of the theory of plate tectonics history when I see such huge pieces of ice like these on Broad Creek. The men in the boats are watching as the skipper in one of them is looking for the source of water in his boat. Too much enthusiasm while breaking ice and turning too sharply had eventually cut a long gash down the side of the boat. He needed to immediately take his boat back to shore and have it hauled out.

As I have said before, I am not aware of anyone taking the time to paint portraits of these headboats. I’m hoping that having done so will keep them in the histories of the head boats. I shot a photo from which I worked out the painting from the Island Queen II. We were among several headboats looking for fish just outside of the Miles River on Tilghman Point. Always on the move, until, the captain sees signs of fish, he stops and drops an anchor and yells out,” put your lines in the water”. He stays as long as he hears the customers yelling about the fish they are catching. When I am out on a headboat I ask everyone if it is alright that I take their picture throughout the day. I have had some of the most fun while being on a headboat as I have ever had out on the water. People manage to leave most of their troubles and the troubles of the world on shore and just want to relax, share stories, and laugh. I also let them know I’ll be sending the good shots to the skipper to put on his website and that they can download them for free. Most find this latest penchant for boat owners to fly flags for a certain ex-president from their workboats, yachts and power boats to defeat the purpose of being put on the water. I agree.

Pair of Threes – SOLD
Watercolor
22” x 30”

In case you’re wondering. There are three sea gulls and three workboats in this image. You have to look for two of the boats whose masts are barely visible above the horizon. Sometimes the painting is more about the spaces of sky and the water rather than a boat or a person. This is a sunrise on a very cold winter day of oystering out on the open waters of Broad Creek. It is good to remind myself of just how small and relatively insignificant we humans are in the grandeur of this planet.

Stephanie III is also a beautiful O’Neill Jones deadrise workboat. Nicely proportioned trunk cabin with an equally proportioned wheelhouse, all incorporated on a beautiful long hull with some flair up forward in the bow. Days are long for headboats. 8 hours usually. The boats usually leave by seven in the morning and don’t head in, with hopefully happy customers, until around 2:30. Sometimes the fish aren’t where they were the day before and one has to travel to find them. Each captain has a long-time proven go-to-spot when such scarcity is involved. Knowledge of such spots usually came down from their fathers. Having happy customers is always important when dealing directly with people. I know of no captain who wants to see the end of a day when his customers did not get to catch fish of any amount. The remaining 6 head boat captains are very successful at keeping their customers happy at the end of the day. At one time there were approximately forty-five head and six-pack charter boats working out of Kent Island. Now there are only 6 or so of them left.

Pursuit/ Mystery, Persistence
Watercolor
15” x 30”

This location is down the Chester River above Eastern Neck. I have found the very flat backgrounds of the Eastern shore rivers to be wonderful counterparts to the over canvassed verticality of the log canoe rigs. Eastern Neck Island has provided such a horizon for many years. That coupled with a brilliant day of near direct sun, incredibly blue waters and sails full of such light and good winds make for a classic racing duel. Persistence #12 (1890s) with her St. Andrews rampant lion device on her kite is tacking out from under Mystery’s wind shadow. They are looking for clear air from which to better chase down Mystery # 8, (1932) and perhaps gain the lead. Years ago, Mystery sported a circular saw blade on her kite. Her owner ran a lumber yard for years. There is very little that log canoe sailors hold dear. Their sense of humor can be quite raucous, low brow and downright degenerate. I love it all. Some crews call the red lion device The Food Lion.

When Phyllis and married 42 years ago, she told me then that it would be fine with her if I was to quit driving heavy equipment in a sand mine and pursue my art on a full-time basis. I know that over the centuries there have been few artists that have been so very lucky. I do not know of many artists today that have that opportunity. I don’t mix easily with other artists, I’m too busy to search them out to converse. What would we talk about? Matisse was once heard to say,” To be an artist, one must first cut out one’s tongue”. Phyllis then told me not to worry about sales. She told me to paint, draw, photograph, who, what, when, where, and why I wanted. Her confidence in me, my vision and pursuits has never flagged. She then said simply that people will find me. And they have. Especially so in the last 35 years of working with Carla Massoni. Both Phyllis and Carla are wonderful souls who have encouraged, enabled, protected me from bad players, myself, and have weighed in on good and bad opportunities. I am a very lucky man. For me to paint such a watercolor as this one reflects the encouragement I have received and the trust to remain true to my vision. It is the opportunity to take between 300 and often times over 1,000 digital photos that allows me to delete, crop to make different images from one of many, and to delete the split-second different ones that do not speak to me even in hindsight. That gives me the opportunity to make something different and paint something out from under the roof of my brain. I do not worry about who will purchase or understand. It’s important enough for them to resonate to something in the pictures. Whether they know of it or not. Why do we say things like,” I like it but don’t know why?”. Occasionally I hear that some folks would like for me to paint more images of just water. While I have taken several hundred photos of just that and every now and then I take the time to paint one, it is such a comment that just pushes those possibilities to the back burner for a while. My plate is full, it is always full. There is so much that inspires me, intrigues me, and causes me to pause in absolute awe of what I see and enables me to do what I get to do. How do I keep up with it all? Good question.

Rent Control
Watercolor
30” x 22”

Over the years I have painted several images of what are called clam or fish crates. I enjoy the possibilities that such repeated shapes can bring to mind. I have used them to suggest downtown cityscapes towering over narrow streets. I have compared them to snow covered Japanese temples like those of Nara. In this instance it was city apartments that came to mind. Hence the title, Rent Control. There are lots of subtle textural variations in the basic colors and repeated shapes that I enjoyed exploring.

Mark Elburn, a waterman that I have known for much of my 35 years on these waters owns a goodly amount of turtle pots. At the time he owned a boat big enough to go most anywhere in the Bay, a good decent skiff to get into tight spaces, and a good knowledge of where he had caught them before and where they might just be again. Many years ago, I had the good fortune to go turtle potting all the way up to the Jersey Pine Barrens with another waterman, Jimmy Kline. We went out to the marshes of Delaware and up to the Bush River. At the time it was the Chinese who were driving the market, paying good money for females. They wanted to raise them in their own ponds. For some reason the American snapping turtle did not do well with their water quality and other environmental issues. So, the project failed, causing the local market to collapse. Many states at the time did not require a state license to trap turtles like Maryland. Such a harvest in those states wasn’t on the radar. Maryland watermen would travel as far as Connecticut to trap turtles or way down to Virginia. It is a mixture of the locals in those states who realized that there was good money to be made from trapping turtles and also from the fees for out-of-state licenses. That put a damper on going out of state to trap turtles. Snapping turtles can still bring a fairly decent price. They are really the only marketable turtle left to watermen. The Maryland Terrapin, Painted, and Box turtles are now just as sacred as the rockfish. There are even pictures of governors kissing them. Nothing like a loud ill-informed public outcry to adversely impact a fishery. Over legislation usually comes from such outcries based on purely emotional misinformation. Our state legislature seem to prefer letting these “good citizens” do their research for them. Legislation takes time to amend for vagaries, while regulations can be a more timely responsive tool for management. Not only does a waterman have to deal with the weather, market variables, unpredictable presence of harvestable resources and the need to find good hands that want to do the work. They also have to deal with intrusive “well-meaning” misinformed foundations and associations that seem to have nothing on their plates other than pushing the waterman off the water and out of business. Very few legislators, the public and “experts” realize just how much of any fishery is actually managed by the market. Why buy Maryland seafood when you can get all the crabs, fish and oysters from out-of-state fisheries? Maryland has done very little to protect the marketability of its fisheries in Maryland. Something to think about when you go to a Maryland restaurant and order a seafood dinner. The snapping turtle in this watercolor will be cleaned in Millington and have the seven kinds of meat removed for the two prevalent recipes for Snapper Soup. Life eats life.

Running the Line
Watercolor
8.25” x 30”

This is a close friend of mine with whom I have oystered, ghost potted and crabbed. Time and serious health issues have sidelined him from his last labor of love, trotlining for crabs out of Long Cove on the Chester River. Wayne and I believe in many of the same things. Our politics are not those of many other watermen. But…We go after all of the world’s craziness when we talked on the boat. We shared and still share a lot about family, hopes and fears for them and the world. He is one of the funniest and unbridled people I have the honor to call my friend. Many try to top him but they just can’t get ahead of him.

He says you can’t learn this, you have to be born this way. So true. In this painting, his jacket tells you the weather is windy and cool despite the brilliant sun just breaking the horizon across the river. Its early Fall. One of the signs that the crab season is winding down can be the numerous Monarch butterflies making their way south. The crabs are mainly sooks that travel down bay by the hundreds of thousands in September and into October. They will winter in the nice warm down bay mud. In the shorter days of late September, the local crabs will go to mud. That could be up the creeks and minor tributaries of the rivers and coves. They’ll spend the winter there. In April the locals will start to stir and the tourists will start to move north as the waters warm to 61 degrees and the days get longer. In this painting Wayne is watching the trotline as he runs the boat along it. We are running what is called sunny side. Crabs are easily spooked by shadows and will fall off the bait bags filled with razor clams. I left that job to Wayne and just tried to cull the crabs correctly. I miss the days spent with him and am saddened by his no longer being able to share his knowledge, humor, and poignant insights while I crab with him. We still get to talking and laughing so hard that we have to stop or we both will cough up a lung or two.

September Kites
Watercolor
15” x 22”

If you are looking for colorful sails and hulls in the log canoe fleet then you must look elsewhere. The hulls are white with the exception of one very blue log canoe, Island Image. Blue is considered a bad luck color on the Chesapeake Bay. At one time the Image sported yellow sails. That earned her a veritable cornucopia of nicknames. None of which were very complementary. Kites are the triangular sails that are flown from the foremast in light to medium winds. That enables the canoe to reach and sail with winds, breezes that are off the water. Anyway…

The kites can sport family burgees, stripes that are echoed in the crew shirts, heraldic devices, and good luck symbols like clovers. Many designs have come and gone, like the skull and cross bones, called” smiling jack,” a circular saw blade, and a Black-eyed Susan blossom. Still in use are an osprey clutching a rockfish in its talons, and an apple with a bite taken from it among others. Unfortunately, simple white kites are becoming more common. I was most fortunate to be chosen to design a device for the newly resurrected Flying Cloud (1932) #22. I chose to create an Art Deco interpretation of clouds. The kites in this watercolor are, left to right, Edmee S., #20 (1930s) with an unadorned white kite, the green clover leaf of the Billie P. Hall, #5 (1903), the Persistence (1890) #12, lion, and the Hewes family burgee of a black duck on a red background for the Silver Heel, #2, (1902). The geometries of the sails, and masts interacting with the negative spaces of blue sky and clouds have attracted me for many years.

Still Standing / Craig Hill Channel Light House
Watercolor
30” x 10.75”

I have been riding past this lighthouse for a few years now. We pass by it when we’re crabbing, eel potting or turtle potting in the waters just outside of Baltimore. This channel light house is also a range light that marks the channel for the Patapsco River. Range lights are used in pairs to mark a channel. Each one of the pair supports a light of different heights. You are in the channel when you see that the two lights are aligned. This lighthouse is unique for Chesapeake Bay lighthouses. It is the first caisson lighthouse built in 1872. At one time it had a building at its base for the lighthouse keeper. I was intrigued by with its uniqueness and the opportunity to take pictures of it in different lights and times of day. I consider it to be part of the growing collection of subjects relating to the upper and western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

In this case I happened upon an image that just for a lark I decided to copy and crop to make a very long and thin vertical of an oysterman seen through his set of hand tongs. The Chinese and Japanese have for centuries used such a format for hanging scrolls. In Japanese they can be called either a kakemono or a kakejiku. It is my nearly lifelong fascination with things Japanese that leads me to such things. One of the many themes in such paintings are the seasons. Hence the title, Oystering/Winter. I have been looking for the three others to finish off the set of four seasons. Hope to find them in time for next year’s exhibition.

Summer – SOLD
Watercolor
30” x 10.25”

Last year I did a very tall and thin painting of an oystermen seen through a set of hand tong rakes. It reminded me of a Japanese kakemono scroll. Celebrating seasonal change is a very traditional motif. Moving ahead to this year I decided to search my photos for images that I could continue use both the shape and theme. Last year it was a winter subject. This year I chose summer for the season. It is indicated by the hand holding and being held by a crab that’s about to be dropped into a bushel basket. I decided to use the seasonal harvests of the watermen as the baseline definition for each season. Oysters for winter and crabs for summer. I have yet to find an image that will speak of autumn and for spring. It would be nice if all four of these paintings went to one person who would hang them alongside each other or better yet hang the appropriate one as the season changes. If wishes were horses we’d all be riding. Right?

Early hours, extremes of weather, some dangerous times, and long days do not deter me. I am fascinated by the determination to work of these men and how it interacts with the environment in which they pursue a living. I am always testing my own endurance and am willing to do most anything to make their days easier, shorter and maybe more profitable. It is an almost indescribable sense of deep satisfaction I get from spending such days with them. Not to mention the bonus of the pictures I take of the things I get to see. In this picture a young waterman is handling a snapping turtle who is not pleased with being caught or handled. He will end up in a fifty-gallon drum with others of his ilk. Snapping turtles do not like each other and are quite willing to express such dislike by biting and clawing each other. They are the apex predator in the water margins where they live. They have been known to swim underwater while plucking ducklings as they swim in a line following their mother. Some folks who live on ponds hire a waterman to clean out their ponds of the snapping turtles. Some who know just a little about the waters upon which they live think turtle-potters are raping their creeks and shorelines. There is a story about an elderly gentleman setting out on his lawn enjoying the morning paper while looking out at the creek where he lives. His next-door neighbor, a mother and her two children are swimming in the creek. They see these friends of mine coming up the creek in their bateau to fish the turtle pots they had set the day before. The lady starts to berate the men with all manner of ill-informed opinions in a very loud voice. Her neighbor, pipes up calling her some impolite names and then tells her that these men are trapping and catching the very snapping turtles that are probably in the water right where she and her children are swimming at that moment. The guys tell me that they did not know that people could jump nearly straight up and out of the water as those three did that day. We have turtle potted along waterfront neighborhoods of very nice McMansions, older developments of small houses, marshes where the homeless have set up tents and shelters, trailer parks, in places where bulkheads leak suspicious fluids. Also, along areas where the noise of the highways was loud enough to drown out the outboard as we passed underneath the bridges, and along industrial waterfronts. Truly not an environment from which I have painted before and about which I still have some reservations. Such places like Back Creek, Bear Creek, the Patapsco, Curtiss Creek and Bay and the Magothy and even around Gibson Island. We had been making cross-bay trips in the very early morning from Rock Hall. Sometimes the hour or so long afternoon trip back to Rock Hall would be in really nasty conditions too. I guess some of what I am trying to portray and say is that these men own their own places of business and want to be successful in their chosen line of work. I admire them for their persistence and want nothing but the best for them.

The Keep – NOT FOR SALE
Watercolor
22″ x 15”

This image is a result of spending hours on a small boat while trotlining for crabs. It is a shape driven composition with the textures of wooden bushel baskets, a header, orange gloves for handling the crabs while using the wooden cull stick. I like the repeated shapes, the midafternoon light, and the sky with a hint of tomorrow’s weather. The baskets reminded me of a castle keep. The upper most basket, called a header is bottomless and is placed upside-down over the bottom basket. The crabs will be settling down and taking up less space so more will be needed to add to make a bushel that the buyer won’t complain about. Sometimes the price of bushel of number ones can go for over $100 off the boat.

What the dealers and restaurants will then sell them for can be obscene. Early on the in the season a bushel may go for $200. But the bushels of crabs will have to be “ice cream coned.” That means the crabs are piled up higher than the rim. If you aren’t careful the crabs may spill out in an angry claws-out rush to escape. So, a header is used to keep them in place until the bushel is full enough to put a lid on. More crabs maybe added through the bottomless header. Sometimes when it is really hot and the shady spots are already used with other full baskets, the lid won’t be put in place until the boat is on its way in to the dock. A waterman is known by the care and quality of his product. He is paid accordingly. An argument can be made for a vision of the Bay that would allow watermen to retain traditional stewardship roles.

The One and Only
Watercolor
30” x 22”

This Tilghman islander is Patrick Whewell. He is one of the most colorful linguists I have ever known and is one of the most outrageously outspoken watermen I have the honor to work alongside. In oyster season he culls for Jeff Harrison. They have worked together oystering for many years. Jeff is very articulate, sharp, well read and the smartest oystermen with whom I have ever spent time. He and I both appreciate Patrick’s incredibly outrageous sense of humor. Very little restrains him and very little is off limits. It is almost an honor to be the butt of his very creative sense of humor. Almost. Patrick is also a very competent waterman with his own boat the Psyco Sally. He is an asset on any boat with his keen eye for solving problems. I just had to paint his portrait. His nickname is The One and Only.

The Miss Violet was built in Deltaville, Virginia. I am ever so respectful when working my way into an acquaintance. He did let me take a dockside photograph of him next to his boat one morning. It is almost what I need for my project of painting a portrait. I plan on asking him again for the opportunity to perhaps go out with him one day to take photos. I have a set of earlier photos of him and his boat shot from another head boat while out on the water to pass along to him. I was and am still rather proud of this boat portrait I did of the Miss Violet. This is in spite of her now sporting a deep crimson hull. Things change. All the time.

The Oystermen Rode Off Into the Sunrise – SOLD
Watercolor
8.5” x 30”

In my watercolors I have used the rakes of hand tongs to set off a sky. This time it is a sunrise. A rather dramatic sunrise which for some perverse reason made me think of the old western movies which at the end have the hero riding off in to the sunset. Except this time, it’s watermen riding off into the sunrise to go to work. I like the geometries of the rack, the wires, and teeth of the rakes. Hand tongs have and apparently will continue to fascinate me.

. I know very little of her and of her captain. Am really hoping that Vera Meredith will write a history of these men, the early history of the business, and their boats. She is a veritable encyclopedia of such information and stories. Vera and Tyrone grew up on the Island Queens I and II, worked on them and crewed for their father Eldridge. Many of the captains have credited Captain Eldridge with having held the headboat businesses together through hard times. I hope to meet with Captain Butler sometime and get his permission to take a picture from which to paint his portrait.

The Work Ain’t Hard and the Boss is Easy
Watercolor
30” x 22”

This is a portrait of “Buck” Lynch. He is the owner and operator of the Stephanie III, a Chesapeake Bay deadrise workboat. One of the prettiest and largest on the Bay. From late April to late September, Buck operates the Stephanie III as a head boat, taking groups out for a day of fishing on the bay and its tributaries. He learned a lot as one of the mates on Eldridge Meredith’s headboat many years ago. He is now 74. From October 1^st to the end of March he uses the boat to dredge and hand tong for oysters. He and I have enjoyed each other’s company for several trips. In fact, the title of this exhibition is made from two of his quotes. The title of this watercolor is also one of his sayings.

He’s led a hard life with many difficult times, some admittedly self-inflicted, not only is he a waterman but also a lay preacher. He has a great sense of humor which he shares as we stand shoulder to shoulder at the board, culling oysters. We talk about family, current times, share stories while he teaches me a lot about oystering and his story as a black man on Kent Island while growing up there. The hand tonger on the boat is his friend Bobby Washington. It is apparent when you see the ease with which they move about that these two have known and worked together for quite a while. There is a two-license limit to the boat. That would be two, 12-bushel limits for a total of 24 bushels for hand tongers. Other gear types have different limits. I have my own Tidal Fishery License (TFL) with an oyster ticket on it. This means if I am culling on a boat with one oysterman I can bring my quota to the boat. Over the years I have been able to bring several bushels to various boats after the solo operator has caught his own quota. Getting a portrait worthy photograph of Buck was difficult. He is shorter than me and stands up on a box to better work the cull board. Most of the time he is bent to the task. It’s usually so cold that the layers of hoods hide his face. Every now and then I’ll say his name and he’ll look up so I can catch his face for a photograph or two. Such an image is very important to me for many reasons. There are fewer and fewer black watermen on the Bay. I would like to find and paint them all. I feel it important that they be remembered this way. I give all of the watermen several prints of them at work. Few of them have such things with which to remember their days on the water. Few have pictures to share with their grandchildren and show them this is what they did. On this day Buck said, “The work ain’t hard and the boss is nice.”

Them That Feed Those That Play
Watercolor
12” x 30”

I worked alongside this waterman for over 10 years. We got to know each other quite well and could talk freely about many things, family, other watermen, the craft of gearing net, setting, and fishing pound nets, catfish pots, fykes, weather, tides, and water. I have learned one hell of a lot from him. He and his father were always figuring out how to work smarter not harder as Scrooge McDuck would say. Some of the work was just plain physically hard and demanding work for which there were few alternatives. Here, Sam, is hanging net that will become the leader or hedging. The net has to be hung in a way that stays down and working during the different tides. This means hanging the net in a slalom like fashion on alternating sides of the poles. Otherwise, the net would flow out away from the poles during either flood or ebb tide. The fish would then swim under the net as it flowed out from the poles. Then when the tide reverses the net would flow up against the poles and work properly.

Having a leader that works only for one tide isn’t cost effective. When the fish sense the change in the flow of water as it passes through the leader they will then start to go to deeper water. Fish go to deeper waters when spooked. The hedge/leader guides them to the hearts and then to a funnel and eventually to the crib which is in deeper water on the edge of the channel. This can be a very effective mode of fishing. The basic design goes back maybe a thousand years or more. Sam is one of the finest pound net fishermen I know. This day it was just Sam and myself. In this instance he is glancing up and over to a pleasure sail boat working its way up the Sassafras River. The irony of few people understanding what it takes to harvest their seafood dinners can be overwhelming.

We Will Find and Remember You / Nomini Hall
Watercolor
15” x 22”

Back in the 1600s there was an English colonist by the name of Robert King Carter who managed to acquire 300,000 acres of land in Northern Neck Virginia. As time went on his holdings were eventually divided up among his children and their families. His plantation, Nomini Hall (1729) still exists and despite several reverses is owned by a descendant, Lee Arnest. The nightmare and hardships of amoral slavery provided the labor pool. Some of the landed gentry recognized the inherent evils. It was in the mid-1770s that Robert Carter a descendant of King Carter actually manumitted his slaves. For all of his forward thinking his sons did not follow suit and enslaved many who had been freed. The cost of their freedom and that of the alternate labor source, indentured workers, proved too high to be cost effective for them.

If you like please read, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall by Louis Morton and The Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian. Both fascinating looks into that era. Now, fan the pages to the present. For several years, Johnny Kinnamon of Tilghman Island and I have been friends. He is a long-time boat builder from Tilghman and has built over 200 deadrise workboats. Many for customers in the Norther Neck region of Virginia. Johnny and his son J.C. have always felt responsible for their boats and customers. That is a major reason for customer loyalty and many return customers. Johnny had been invited down to visit with them and enjoy their hospitality. I was invited along to make the trip to visit these folks. Northern Neck is a lot of wide-open farm fields bordered by rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. We eventually had to be rescued from being lost and had to be guided to Nomini Hall by Johnny’s friend Lee Arnest. The driveway lined with nearly 300-year-old tulip poplar trees of all shapes eventually gave way to open fields and a small cluster of buildings. Both the original manor house and the second one burned and were not rebuilt. There is a very nice smaller residence. One of the current buildings is a pole barn of good size containing a great room with a corner office, and a comfortable bunk room in the back. The great room is lined with display cases and shelves and shelves of oyster cans, tools, and hundreds if not thousands of decoys. There is a more than adequate kitchen used to prepare meals of fried oysters, clams, rockfish, and homemade crab cakes. Quite a few of the Kinnamon customers were there to greet us and stayed for an amazing dinner prepared by Lee and his wife Karyn. Nomini Hall became a base from which Johnny and I would go oystering the next day with yet another of his customers. Lee is rightly proud of his family history, his collections, and his seafood business. He has collected many artifacts, photographs, papers, and books about the family. In the past couple of years, he and others interested in the area’s history have been using ground penetrating radar to locate the slave’s cemetery. It is on a piece of ground bordered by farm fields and a ravine that is slowly swallowing up the site. As each grave is discovered it is marked with a plain and simple wooden cross. in spite of the early January brilliant sunlight, it was a very somber site. Hence the title. Recently a loose association of historians, and descendants have been able to find a few relatives of those buried there. Strangely enough I got to meet a descendant of one of those enslaved families quite by accident. It was being while out on a Buck Lynch’s (see essay # 16) headboat last summer. I had heard a fisherman mention Nomini Hall. Curious, I introduced myself and we shared our stories. I decided then and there that I would do a painting of the crosses in the cemetery’s trees and leaves. After talking to my wife Phyllis and with Carla Massoni we decided to make a limited-edition print of the watercolor and donate them to Lee Arnest to use in the project. He has already gifted a couple of prints to known descendants. I have saved out one to give to the gentleman I met that day out on the water. Both Lee and his wife and the descendants get quite emotional about this. I printed a small edition for them of a pen and ink illustration with crosses leaning against a tree that has been growing in the cemetery for decades.

Yes, That’s the Name of the Boat – SOLD
Watercolor
15” x 22”

This is the boat on which I culled crabs for and with a good friend of mine who no longer is following the water. I oystered, ghost potted and crabbed with him for many years. We went to meetings in Annapolis, many Oyster Advisory Committee meetings, attended and testified at a lot of hearings about oysters in Annapolis. He has an irrepressible sense of humor in spite of his health issues. If you can imagine the emoji for poop inside a red circle with a red bar across the interior you will then understand the boat’s name. No S*#T.

He had a hard time getting the DNR to recognize and allow the name as it appeared on the transom. Wayne taught me a lot about trotlining, helped me with my terminology, and shared what “little” he admitted to understanding about crabs. In this picture I am waiting as he brings the boat to the dock to be loaded with the trotlines, coolers, his coffee and my tea, fuel, and other gear. It is the same morning I described in the painting,” And They’re Off.” A very calm morning just before sunrise. You can see the early light illuminating the shore in the background. Some mornings are quite but we know the wind will lay in wait to kick up her heels as the sun warms the day.

MARC CASTELLI / Mules Feet and Dead Man’s PenniesOctober 25 – November 30

MARC CASTELLI / Mules Feet and Dead Man’s Pennies
October 25 – November 30