Tryon Palace at the North Carolina History Center in New Bern, North Carolina, is an interactive museum where I painted murals for three very different exhibits. One featured a large seascape surrounding a miniaturized boat with operating sails and navigation equipment. Of my own photos of the seascape murals, only the one you see above survived. The other showed a pine forest with taps installed in the trees for collecting pine sap to make turpentine.

The center of New Bern is a preserved colonial town, similar to Williamsburg. Inside the museum are a few reproductions of Colonial room interiors with windows looking out onto curved murals of the backyards and neighborhood houses from the period. It was easy to recreate authentic architectural details and house colors because I could just walk outside the museum to the historic section to see the real thing.

I must confess, though, that my favorite feature of New Bern, North Carolina, was the plentiful Spanish moss, which left me homesick for my native New Orleans.