Here Martha Jackson Jarvis (Lynchberg, 1952 - ) bears witness to her great-great-great-great grandfather's experience as an enlisted free Black militia man during the American Revolutionary War. In May of 1781, Luke Valentine and his cohort, led by Captain Adam Clements, engaged in battle at points from Bedford County, Virginia to the shores of South Carolina. This was a treacherous and unpredictable passage across uncharted territories, particularly for a Black man in the American South.

In November of 1832, Valentine made a declaration in order to receive his pension for his services in the Revolution, the documentation of which led to Jarvis' discovery of him and his story, more than 150 years later.

Inspired by this newfound family history, Jarvis speculatively retraces his steps, resulting in her signature, large-scale abstract paintings in which she tracks his physical and emotional journey through various landscapes, both wild and domestic, embedding the work with constructed memories of a bygone time and place.

Along with the practical introduction of the terrestrial via natural pigment, the compositions also take visual cues from nature, implementing forms reminiscent of wild vegetation and waterways, both in obvious reference to the terrains and environments Luke Valentine would have traversed on his march and to highlight the unseen threads that connects us to home and our ancestry, like roots on the family tree.