Having visited Macao myself in 1983, I wanted to depict typical Chinese lifestyles that Captain Cook would also have observed in his voyages. Whole families were born, raised, lived and worked on their river sampans in China. Designs of sampans were a traditional father to son craft and each river in China had its own unique styles just as Cook would have noted that Polynesian style canoes varied from Tahiti to Hawaii and from island to island. This mini-series of four paintings depicts four far corners of our globe that James Cook explored over 200 years ago , farther than most modern people ever travel even with the ease and speed of modern air travel.