Her subject is John Pitner, a middle-aged unemployed ship painter who called himself the founder, promoter, banker, quartermaster and commander in chief of his own unit of patriots.

Freddie Brice, an 80-year-old laborer and onetime ship painter whose bouts of schizophrenia brought him long periods of institutionalization, is having his first solo exposure, at K. S. Art.

After study with George Grosz and Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League, Knight labored as a ship painter while serving in the Navy from 1944 to 1946.

Once he entered school, he was encouraged to pursue his art by both his teacher at school and also by de:Hugo Schnars-Alquist, a recognized seascape and ship painter who lived nearby.

Outside of racing, Leonard worked as a ship painter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and painted apartments in the famed Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village housing developments in Manhattan.

His work was required for several reasons: to ensure that U.S. ship painters were correctly applying the camouflage schemes, to aid in identifying U.S. ships that might later be lost, and to have records of the ship camouflage of other Allied navies.