SET OF TWO JOHN M. BARBER PRINTS

While a young man, John M. Barber became enchanted with the sea. Early in life he dedicated himself to capturing the essence of the living elements on canvas. His artistic talents won him a fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to pursue his education at Virginia Commonwealth University from which he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1969. Since then Barber has lived and worked in Richmond, Virginia, gaining a national reputation as one of the most perceptive painters of the life and places on the Chesapeake Bay and nearby Atlantic. To experience his subject first-hand, he built by hand a small sailing sloop in 1977 and began to prowl the waterways, acquainting himself with the lives of the watermen and the moods of nature. He was intrigued by the warm yet terse personalities of the watermen and the worn beauty of their tools - the skipjacks and bugeyes, crabhouses and boathouses, and always the lighthouses acknowledging the constant threat from sea and weather. Barber's work has been viewed by thousands in shows and galleries throughout the country and is found in many fine individual and corporate collections from coast to coast. He is a Charter member of the American Society of Marine Artists, a national organization dedicated to the fostering of fine marine art. In his efforts to document the Chesapeake and bring attention to the need for protection of this great national resource, he has been active as a member of The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy and The Virginia Coast Reserve.

Gloucester Pt. Watermen, Sarah's Creek off the York River, is a limited edition collector print, number 283/950, and has been signed by the artist.

In the painting, it's late morning as Captain Lee Hawthorne steers his oyster tong boat Miss June down Sarah's Creek to sell his morning's catch at Cook's Seafood. Ahead we see the traditional Bay-built buy-boat Florence Marie. She is 65 feet long and was built in Laban, Virginia, in 1922. Sixty-five year old Captain Jimmy Payne has been dredging for Atlantic blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay and now returns to sell his catch. Captain Jimmy has worked the water continually for more than thirty-seven years. These boats are a part of a vanishing breed of traditionally built, wooden vessels and hardy men. They chose this demanding and uncertain life of gleaning their livelihood from the mighty Chesapeake and her rivers. Sarah's Creek is located on the northern shore of the York River near the Gloucester Point Bridge.

Oyster Dredging Aboard the Skipjack "Martha Lewis" is a limited edition collector print and has been signed by the artist.

The skipjack Martha Lewis is seen here dredging for oysters in the cool waters of the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Choptank River on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She was built in 1956 by Bronza Parks of Wingate, Maryland. To her port can be seen Ed Farley's skipjack, Stanley Norman and ahead off her port bow is Stanley Larrimore's Lady Katie. The Chesapeake Bay Skipjacks are the last remaining commercial fishing vessels to work under sail in North American waters. Once these grand little ships were plentiful but as of 1979 the fleet had dwindled to only 29 boats. Some of them were built before the turn of the century.

More about John M. Barber at http://www.johnbarberart.com/.