The Coast Guard Massachusetts State House Mural Project

I am deeply honored and inspired to have been selected by the Coast Guard Memorial Committee to undertake a major mural project to be installed in the Massachusetts State House Capitol Building in late 2025. The Coast Guard has its roots in the Commonwealth — The Boston Light was the first in the nation dating to 1716; the US Revenue Cutter Service was established by Alexander Hamilton in 1790 to raise money to pay off the new nation’s debts; and the Humane Society of Massachusetts, with surfboat crews saving shipwreck victims beginning in the 1840s– all eventually merged into the modern Coast Guard. I’ll be updating my progress during the process of bringing the early concept into a final work during the spring, summer and fall of 2025.

Below you can see the first three concepts I presented to the Committee late in 2024 during the competition stage:

The Committee liked the idea of combining the three elements into one imaginary scene, but add more drama then the concept pictured above. So, I began to quickly sketch some ideas for a new composition with the surfboat and crew at the forefront. Below you’ll see the roughest of thumbnails; perhaps I’m the only one who can decipher them, but the one on the bottom right is close to the working point of view I chose:

Next (below) shows a pencil sketch incorporating the three elements now drawn with more detail — the Revenue Cutter MASSACHUSETTS, The Boston Light, and the surfboat and crew. There are eight-to-ten crew members aboard, and so I am trying to arrange them in the most compelling poses, playing off each other to lead your eye and achieve a classic ‘heroic’ composition. Below, then, is one of dozens of iterations I did moving figures around and adding and subtracting others. The 18th-century skyline of Boston (showing the State House itself, where the art will be hanging) will be an interesting contextual detail:

That eventually turned into this (below) which, as of March 2025, is a pretty fleshed-out conceptual drawing and value study. Using this, I will photograph a live model dressed as an 1840s surfman (complete with period cork life vest) in these poses to use in the final master drawing and color study. As you can see, the Boston light is casting a strong beam from her 1859 Fresnel lens backlighting the scene; the surfmen are rescuing shipwreck victims (with their lantern casting a warm glow and illuminating the boat’s identity) and spotting others in the water, and the MASSACHUSETTS is giving chase to another vessel to collect tariffs. I have also designed what will be an intricately carved, gilded header board, fashioned after a Coast Guard commissioning banner, to act as an identifier for the subject of the work.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on my progress; feel free to e-mail me at russ@russkramer.com