MOUNT PLEASANT — Dale Watson spent several years as an Army paratrooper before pursuing his passion for art as a career. Now, his military background, love of history and skills with a pencil and paintbrush converge to bring scenes and heroes from the Revolutionary War to life.
Watson said he has been an avid artist and history lover since childhood. He’s been drawing for as long as he can remember, he said, before he even started elementary school.
“My dad was a minister, and my mom would put a pen and paper in my hand to keep me from fidgeting during his sermons,” Watson said.
One of his favorite things to draw growing up was soldiers, he said. He had a fascination with Daniel Boone and pilgrims.
After his time in the military, Watson joined an architectural firm. Initially, he wanted to become an architect, but he quickly found that what he enjoyed most was creating the renderings for the projects.
A detail of soldiers raising a Liberty flag in a piece by Dale Watson, Thursday, November 6, 2025, in Mount Pleasant.
Over the course of his career, Watson would occasionally do other projects. He drew historic houses for the Charleston Museum. A friend of his who worked as a park ranger recommended him for a project to illustrate Vendue Range on the precipice of the Civil War. Then he was commissioned for paintings that became murals at the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon downtown.
Watson said his work caught the attention of Doug Bostick, the late director of the S.C. Battleground Preservation Trust. After an initial call in 2020, Bostick called the artist up about a year later and said he was partnering with the American Battlefield Trust for a new project — the Liberty Trail. Watson’s work would end up serving as the illustrations displayed on the Liberty Trail’s website and app.
Catherine Noyes, the director of the Liberty Trail Project, said the initiative came from a goal of highlighting historic sites, preserving lands and providing information on the Revolutionary era in preparation for the nation’s 250th birthday.
“One of the early challenges quickly became the fact that, as opposed to later conflicts, there’s no photography of events during the Revolutionary War,” she said. “And for these lesser-known battles in South Carolina, there often aren’t paintings or illustrations.”
Watson recreated several battlefield scenes in partnership with the American Battlefield Trust, including Fort Fair Lawn in Berkeley County and the Battle of Camden in Kershaw County, with many of his works appearing on the Liberty Trail app and website as well as at the sites themselves.
“Dale has really helped us create a visual identity for this chapter of American history and really is contributing to the overall ability to tell these stories in a huge way,” Noyes said.
In addition to the Liberty Trail, Watson also worked on a series of portraits of lesser-known Revolutionary War figures. His collection of portraits includes Catawba Gen. New River, Sybil Ludington, and British Col. Banastre Tarleton. The artist noted that one of his proudest achievements is his portrait of Gen. Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox.
Watson works with historians at the American Battlefield Trust and S.C. Battleground Preservation Trust to ensure his paintings and drawings are historically accurate. He said the process usually involves referencing other depictions and written descriptions of the battles and figures he recreates.
Larry Swiader, the chief digital officer for the American Battlefield Trust, recalled the process of perfecting the Swamp Fox portrait as largely involving written descriptions of the general. He added that there was a lot of back-and-forth between Watson and historians about the finer details about his appearance.
“I remember one of the first iterations he did had Marion looking too attractive, and one of the pieces of feedback … it was Doug’s feedback, was like, ‘Man, he’s got to be less good looking than that,’” Swiader said. “And sometimes we don’t have visual references, but we do have good written descriptions of certain people, and Marion’s one of them.”
A period hat sits on a mannequin head under different renditions of historical figures including Francis Marion, Thursday, November 6, 2025, in Mount Pleasant.
Swiader noted that in addition to the paintings and digital drawings, the American Battlefield Trust is working with Watson to help bring Revolutionary sites to life in augmented reality. Three Palmetto State sites — Eutaw Springs, Fort Fair Lawn, and Marion Square — have already been recreated and are viewable in the Liberty Trail AR app.
For Watson, getting to be part of these projects that honor the country’s 250th anniversary is still a bit surprising for him.
“I was a kid in 1976 when the bicentennial happened,” he said. “At the time, I thought about all of the grand celebrations that were going on — and that was before I was in the army, of course — and the whole idea of that back then. I never would have thought, ‘Hey, I might be alive, you know, 50 years from now when the (sestercentennial) comes along.”
He added that he is grateful for the freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution and that the founding document has endured this long.
“It makes me very proud to have served and very proud just to be part of this country,” Watson said. “And we’re not perfect, but I think we have a lot of ideals that are very high.”
–postandcourier.com
