Written By Donna Engle
John M. Stewart Jr.’s masterwork unfolds along three walls of a Taneytown gift shop, a 268-foot mural done entirely with an airbrush. The painting fills the eye with portraits of prominent local citizens and two U.S. presidents, scenes from Taneytown history and action at the Battle of Gettysburg.
The mural in the Cherry Tree Shoppe represents the culmination for Stewart of nearly three decades of wielding an airbrush to create art on surfaces as varied as tee-shirts and carnival ride trailers, artists’ canvases and even excavating machines.
As you enter the main shop area, the right side of the mural portrays local history. Josiah Adelsperger, the town’s first mayor, and Judge John Thomas of Carroll County Circuit Court stare unblinking at shoppers. Street scenes and historic buildings appear in the sepia tones of old photographs. On the wall opposite the entrance, George Washington kneels to pray in the snow at Valley Forge and Abraham Lincoln stands ready to speak from the rear platform of a train. On the left, troops in blue and gray exchange fire at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Completing the mural on deadline meant that Stewart often had to work after finishing his day job, until 2 or 3 a.m.: an investment of 528 hours. And it meant dealing with the resident ghost, but the artist was able to complete the project on schedule.
Jeff and Cynthia Lewis, of Fort Myers, Fla., bought the dilapidated building at 8 Frederick Street in 2004. Jeff, a history buff and Carroll County native, chose the mural subjects. He had started with the idea that he didn’t want an ordinary store.
“I said, ÔWe need to have something different to encourage people to come and stay.’ I wanted it to be more of a community place to come together rather than just retail.”
When Stewart, a friend of the Lewises, airbrushed a banner for an anniversary party, the idea for the mural was born. Jeff and Cynthia commissioned him to do it.
The trouble with the ghost began when Stewart started work on the mural. As he sketched characters in the foreground in pencil, then airbrushed the background freehand, he had the uneasy sense of being watched. When he left at night, the details would be sharp and clear. When he returned the next day, the airbrushing would be blurred and colors changed. “Something’s wrong here,” he told Jeff Lewis.
The solution arrived as the two men were working in the building one day. A woman knocked on the door and introduced herself as a descendant of the Norman Hagan family, who built the house in the mid-1800s on the foundation of a tavern that stood there in the 1700s. They learned she was a great-great-granddaughter of Agnes Hockensmith, Norman Hagan’s niece, but neither man recalls her name. She told them of Anna Hagan, who died at age 21 of a heart attack on her wedding day.
Jeff took the visitor to the basement, which seemed to be the source of the spiritual emanations.
“I asked her to tell her relatives that we didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “She talked to them aloud as she walked through [the basement].”
It worked. Interference with the mural stopped. When Stewart airbrushed the image of the historic building that now houses the store and an adjoining house, he placed images of Anna Hagan at an upper window and her mother in a rocking chair.
Stewart grew up in Taneytown. He started his art career in elementary school, painting nursery rhyme characters to decorate the school library. At Francis Scott Key High School, he received his only formal art training. He learned pen and ink drawing and painting in oil and watercolors.
Stewart was an athlete: tight end, defensive safety and second string quarterback on the school football team, three times Most Valuable Player; varsity basketball player; baseball team pitcher, with two back-to-back no-hitters in 1979. He graduated in 1980 and was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, but decided professional baseball wasn’t what he really wanted to do.
Nor was college. Stewart went to work at the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. plant in Union Bridge. In the early 1980s, he took a trip to Ocean City and encountered airbrushing. He was fascinated by the technique of creating art with pressurized air that propels paint onto a surface. When he couldn’t talk any of the Ocean City artists into teaching him the medium, he taught himself.
Stewart started his airbrush education by visiting Crouse Ford Sales Inc., Taneytown, and talking to the shop paint supervisor about the technique. For his first project, John bought a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am and airbrushed an eagle across the hood. The bird was multicolored, talons open and wings spread.
“From that point, I fell in love with it,” he said. “I turned my brushes in and started airbrushing.”
Having found his path in art, he followed where it led him. In the next two decades, it led him to spend most of his time on the road, around the state and across the U.S.
In 1990, John opened Stewart Enterprises in Taneytown, a shop where he created original pieces and copied pictures onto fabric. He was happy to be back in Carroll County, but the money wasn’t enough to make a living as a full-time airbrush artist, not even when he supplemented his income by working at carnivals during the summers.
In 1992, Stewart opened a store on the boardwalk in Ocean City to sell airbrushed items. He acquired the nickname “Cobra” because as he concentrates on airbrushing, his tongue darts in and out of his mouth. Off season, he went to Florida or to the Midwest to airbrush colorful trailers for carnival rides and artwork on the rides.
“I made a living through airbrushing, but I burnt out,” he said.
Stewart headed home, put down his airbrush and took other jobs to support his family. He has an adult son from his first marriage and two stepdaughters with his third wife, Sue. He worked for several local companies, occasionally finding an outlet for his creativity by lettering or airbrushing company equipment.
“Some people are very successful. I wasn’t because I keep going back to my roots,” Stewart said. “I’m an everyday type country boy, and I always will be.”
Stewart had met many people as he crisscrossed the U.S. One was an agent who called him to be an extra in the movie, “Major League II,” released in 1994. He appeared as seven different players for different teams, from Baltimore to Seattle. He had bit parts in several other movies, acquired a new nickname, “Hollywood,” and met some celebrities.
Now 47, he is a construction foreman with Station Maintenance Solutions, Inc., New Windsor, a contractor for Royal Farms Stores. The family – John, Sue and her daughters – lives near Uniontown.
Stewart’s airbrushes had been gathering dust for several years when Jeff and Cynthia commissioned him to do the mural. Few things could have made him happier than the opportunity to dust them off. Of all the mural subjects, John is most proud of the portrait of Washington.
Stewart wanted portraits of Washington and Lincoln in the mural because they were “the most important presidents in our lives,” he said. Although Lincoln had no personal connection to Taneytown, Washington stopped there on his way to Philadelphia in 1791. Local tradition has it that he and Mrs. Washington were served a dinner of mush and milk at the tavern, hence the name, “The Cherry Tree” for the Lewis’ store.
As for the scenes of the Battle of Gettysburg, Stewart pointed out that it might have gone down in history as the Battle of Taneytown. Union troops had been positioned along Pipe Creek, but met the Confederates at Gettysburg instead.
Although Stewart now supervises construction, his creativity still seeks an outlet. He said he may go into taxidermy, a sideline that would allow him to use his airbrush on animals he mounts.
“Reaching for the stars, it seems like there is always something in the way,” he said. “But what Lewis let me do in Taneytown, that was a star I could reach.”
“If I stop doing [airbrush], it will always be there and you will know the name and see the artwork,” said Stewart. “I would love to do it for the rest of my life, but I need to pay the bills. The Taneytown project, my marker, is there. There’s nothing around here like that.”
Someday, Stewart hopes, his grandchild will be able to show people the mural and say, “My grandfather did that.”
