Stiles Collection

• A Brief History of UGA Law
• The Law Oak
• American Presidents
• Special Field Orders No. 15
• UGA Outliers
• Arms
• Poll Tax
• Loving vs. Virginia
• The Golden Rule Argument
• Plessy vs. Ferguson
• Athens Circa 1859

American Presidents by far is my most simplistic painting, but without question it has presented as my most popular creation.  And given its simplicity, it is the only painting for which I have obtained formal copyright protections.  Despite its simple form, its meaning is often missed by adults, yet quickly identified by children, as they count the forty-four (44) markers

I have sold over 150 original reproductions of this painting.  Each reproduction, this one included qualifies as duplicate original as each is hand painted and bears different news paper articles.  The one before you is the sole American President duplicate original with the election day newspaper of the Athens Banner Herald.  For a more detailed expression of this painting’s significance to me personally, please see the attached email, I sent to President Obama during his last weeks in office.

• The landscape of the Atlantic coastline from Jacksonville, FL to Charleston, South Carolina.
• The landscape itself is set forth by 40 squares, each representative of an acre of land. 
• Special Field Orders, No. 15 (SFO 15) were the orders issued by the Union Army General, William T. Sherman on January 16, 1865.  SFO confiscated approximately 400,000 acres of land along the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to be divided into parcels of not more than 40 acres, and given to an identified 18,000 former slaves and their families.
• Modern recitals and understanding of “40 Acres and a Mule” are inconsistent with SFO 15 in terms of both scope of land and application.   It was limited to this exact track of land and only those slaves identified by General Sherman.
• SFO was revoked by President Johnson and never put into place.
• On a very personal note, my Grandfather (who passed for white) purchased over 25 acres of marsh front property in Savannah, GA back in 1930.  Given the concerns of Malaria at the time, water front property had very limited value.  He purchased this land, which was within the same track identified in SFO 15 for $4,200.00.  Today the land has a value over 350 times the original purchase price.  

1. This painting is premised on the Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers: The Story of Success, and the concept that it takes 10,000 hours conducting an activity to become an expert.
2. The circles or markers in the painting represent individuals.
3. The grouping at the bottom of the painting is the large baseline collection of individuals.
4. Those markers at the top of the painting, represent Outliers. 
5. To be sure, there are many Outliers teaching us and amongst us.  Several of these individuals are notated by their initials on outlying markers.