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Salty Eyes is a portrait of the writer Ernest Hemingway for the Eyes of American History series. Hemingway was the author of such notable works as The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls, amongst other classics of American fiction. His colorful life and raw honesty were trademarks of this macho author, whose sporting adventures and wartime experience were chronicled as he ascended the ladder of literary prominence. Living much of his adult life outside of the United States, mainly in Cuba, he was an ex-patriot artist who sought solace away from his native country after experiencing the horrors of WWI. He was joined by many other creatives in this self-imposed  exile and disillusionment with the established order. His work reflects man’s struggle with nature and with himself, as best summed up in his work, The Old Man and the Sea. As a writer he suffered from many demons including depression and alcoholism, and sadly took his own life with a gun.

In reference to his work, The Old Man and the Sea, I chose to make his face with an aquatic styled surface texture associated with sea life.

Like the god Neptune, Hemming way stairs triumphantly at us with the piercing eyes and confidence that made him legendary. Here are some quotes attributed to the great author.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

The best way to find out if you can trust someone, is to trust them.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Warrior Eyes is a portrait of the Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who was famous for his destructive march to the sea and the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War. It is one of the Eyes of American History series. He was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant and was ridiculed early on for predicting that hundreds of thousands would die in the war. His initial estimate was actually low, and he had a nervous breakdown before regaining his composure and settling into the task of defeating the South. He was a brilliant tactician who mobilized and moved his army like a well oiled machine. When Grant took over the command of Union forces, he assigned Sherman the task of breaking the back of the Confederacy by plowing through Georgia and destroying the critical manufacturing and train terminals in the city of Atlanta. He followed this up with a campaign to make Georgia “howl” by cutting a sixty mile wide path of destruction as he marched to the port city of Savannah. He cut himself off from his supply lines and plundered the goods his soldiers needed from the countryside as they march. This was a risky maneuver, but Sherman new that without a shock to their sensibilities, the people of the South would not come to accept defeat. I have painted him with a layering of flames across his face that reflect the total war approach that he utilized in his strategy to win the war. His brilliance as a field commander was unsurpassed in the Union army, even by Grant. Still, he did not relish war and wrote of its horror,

  “I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot or heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”