Thirty veterans boarded the USS Yorktown in Charleston Harbor on the Saturday before Veterans Day for a painting class led by artist Mary Whyte, who has taught on the retired aircraft carrier for the last five years. Dozens more joined online from other sites. The gathering brought veterans together to paint, including some who had carried difficult memories for decades.
In its account of the class, CBS News reported that Whyte invited participants to paint their combat boots and demonstrated the process. Navy veteran Jeffry Peterson, who served on warships in the Pacific during the 1970s, painted a watercolor of his boots.
A Soldier's Story Comes Out in Watercolor
For veteran Carissa DiPietro, the class offered a way to express grief she said she had kept to herself for years. She told CBS News that on April 15, 1999, her first day of military service, her recruiter raped her. She also said that two weeks before 9/11, her five-year-old daughter, Ashley May, was murdered by the girl's father, whom DiPietro said was also a service member.
DiPietro said she spent years suppressing the effects of both experiences rather than processing them. Painting, she said, now helps her remember her daughter and express her grief, as well as convey that what happened to her was not okay.
Why Whyte Keeps Bringing Veterans Back to the Easel
Whyte has said art can help veterans reconnect with one another, their communities and themselves. Her work in Milwaukee offers a local connection: after a seven-year project painting life-size watercolors of 50 veterans across 50 states, she created the exhibition “We the People,” which has toured the United States since 2019. Its most recent stop was the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee, where Whyte held a free class for veterans in May.
Whyte went on to found the Patriot Art Foundation to support veterans, an organization that now offers online video tutorials and a weekly online “art muster” open to veterans anywhere. The foundation says it provides free online classes in drawing and watercolor, and according to its own account, more than 22,000 people viewed the We the People exhibition in its first six weeks after it opened to the public in Charleston in 2019, per the Patriot Art Foundation.
From One Carrier Deck to a National Ambition
Whyte told CBS News she would like to eventually see a nationwide Great Veteran Paint-Out held on the Saturday closest to Veterans Day — a goal she described, not a confirmed event. The foundation's own programming calendar shows the idea is already taking shape regionally: it has announced its fifth annual Art of Valor event for November 7, 2026, continuing a Yorktown tradition that Patriots Point describes as an annual gathering held in partnership with the foundation, with 30 local veterans able to join a painting workshop led by Whyte at no cost, materials, instruction and lunch included.
How Milwaukee’s VA Art Services Differ
The Milwaukee VA offers a separate set of creative-arts services: according to VA Milwaukee Health Care, its recreation and creative arts therapy includes arts and crafts activities adapted to veterans’ needs. The Patriot Art Foundation, by contrast, describes free online drawing and watercolor classes and no-cost Yorktown workshops led by Whyte.
That partnership has drawn veterans to the Yorktown's deck before. In coverage of a prior Art of Valor gathering, ABC News 4 reported that veterans received instruction from local artists and painted watercolors reflecting their own journeys, service and sacrifice, with the Patriot Art Foundation hosting workshops and online classes throughout the year to keep that support going beyond a single Saturday.
Whyte has said no veteran should be homeless or hungry after serving, and that people owe veterans their lives. On the Yorktown, participants worked through the class with paint and paper; for DiPietro, the process also offered a way to give shape to grief.
