‘Reunion’ (2025) is inspired in great part by Drew Gilpin Faust’s book ‘This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War’ (Vintage 2008). The diptych of a cadaver tomb symbolizing the Prentiss brothers, killed on opposing sides at the siege of Petersburg, was begun as part of an artist residency at the Gibbes museum in Charleston. It focused on a detail from Faust’s book- that soldiers carried tintypes in battle, hoping that, should they be mortally wounded, they might have enough time to arrange their family around them, in a recreation of the Victorian ‘good death’ at home. The two figures also relate to the true story of the Prentiss brothers, estranged over the slavery issue and choosing to fight on opposing sides. Receiving fatal wounds at the siege of Petersburg, they were brought together and reunited.

Reunion Oil on canvas 74 x 92″ 2025

The Homespun Dress: Women at War

The images below are also related to the ‘Culture of Honor’ series. They explore divisions still prevalent in social attitudes across the country. ‘The Nancy Harts’ were the Confederate’s one women’s militia, out of La Grange, Georgia. I am interested in details of history that complicate, rather than simplify. To the present, despite the way my Art World might like to tidy politics up, there are American women who are very comfortable with a ‘patriarchy’. Again and again, my work leads me to the observations made by Colin Woodard in his book ‘American Character’; we swing uncomfortably, sometimes lethally, between our two natures – whether to demand our individual rights or to obey the group.

The Southern land's a glorious land,
   And has a glorious cause;
Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights,
   And for the Southern boys!
We scorn to wear a bit of silk,
   A bit of Northern lace,
But make our homespun dresses up,
   And wear them with a grace.

And now, young man, a word to you:
   If you would win the fair,
Go to the field where honor calls,
   And win your lady there.
Remember that our brightest smiles
   Are for the true and brave,
And that our tears are all for those
   Who fill a soldier's grave. 

(The Homespun Dress by Carrie Belle Sinclair)