Portfolio > NLB

NLB stands for Negro Leagues Baseball. There were many leagues. Often unsteady ventures that followed the warm weather and the patronage of a smaller segment of the population, they were founded, collapsed, merged, changed names, and transferred cities. Yet their shoestring budgets and changeable rosters managed to create a brand of segregated baseball that was equal and often superior to major league baseball, to White segregated baseball.

These painted abstractions are based on photographs and uniforms of the teams that made up the Negro Leagues. Their variation parallels the often inconsistent record keeping (statisticians cost money that these teams often couldn’t spare) that has produced a historical record of Negro Leagues Baseball that is often constructed substantially of word of mouth, faltering memories, and fable.

As a child I was fascinated with a baseball that my father kept on his dresser. It was autographed by Ernie Banks. For him there were only two baseball players. Mickey Mantle and Ernie Banks. Those two players, one White, the other Black, represented for him all that was perfect and flawed about baseball; loyalty and exclusion, perennial success and consistent failure, the glare of success and the tattoo of futility. Neither player made much of an impression on me as a child. I was too young. But when my parents divorced I knew just what to do. I took my father’s baseball and threw it into Lake Michigan, where I imagined it would begin its floating journey all the way to Japan, where they also played baseball.

For me baseball has always been an abstraction.

Cincinnati Tigers
Oil on Canvas
12"x12"
2020
Pittsburgh Crawfords
Oil on Canvas
12"x12"
2020
Lincoln Giants
Oil on panel
24"x24"
2020
Brooklyn Royal Giants
Oil on Canvas
12"x12"
2020
Negro Leagues Baseball
Oil on Canvas
12"x12"
2020
Indianapolis Clowns
Oil on Canvas
12"x12"
2020
American Giant V
Oil on panel
24"x24"
2018
Pitttsburgh Crawfords
Oil on canvas
40"x40"
2018
Harrisburg Giants
Oil on panel
15"x15"
2018
CLEVELAND BUCKEYES Negro baseball leagues, Negro World Series 1945.
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Gray I
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Monarch I
Oil on panel
24x24"
2018
American Giant I
Oil on panel
24x24"
2018
Colored Gopher I
Oil on panel
24x24"
2018
Black Baron I
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Newark Eagle I
Oil on panel
24x24"
2020
Elite Giant II
Oil on canvas
15" x 15"
2018
American Giant II
Oil on panel
24x24"
2018
Monarch II
Oil on panel
24x24"
2018
Elite Giant III
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Negro Leagues Baseball
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Negro Leagues Baseball
Oil on panel
15" x 15"
2018
Sea Lion I
Oil on canvas
15" x 15"
2018
St. Louis Star I
Oil on panel
14x14"
2019