Art of the Con

The FBI would not say if that was done when Grossman moved in with Birdsong. "I can't release information on any FBI employee that works here," Quantico spokesman Kurt Crawford wrote on Nov. 15 in response to a list of e-mailed questions.

A few days later, however, Grossman was gone from Birdsong's house.

In the cell-phone interview Tuesday, he confirmed he had moved, but would not disclose where.

"I'm just going to be living my life as an artist," he said, "and I'm not going to mislead anyone anymore."

Asked why he had left Virginia, he said, "Because I was ashamed."

Of what?

"Of my past," he said. "You made it so."

In an hour-long discourse ranging from anger to denial to woe, Grossman said he had suffered enough for his lies.

"Can't you leave me alone and let me live my life?" he said.

Grossman downplayed any harm done by his bogus resume - after all, a Sonnet print is a Sonnet print, international repute or not.

"They still have the same value," he said. "They still are fine art that I created and that I spent endless, endless hours and endless, endless days working on."

As for the signed prints bearing dates within his prison stay, Grossman said he hand-drew the images behind bars. "If it wasn't for drawing and painting, I don't think I could have survived," he said.

When he got out, he "refined them" by computer, he explained, and signed them with the dates they were conceived.

Asked about his well-traveled, unfinished canvases, Grossman fell silent.

"Why are you asking?" he said. "They are in progress."

Not that it, or anything he does, is anyone's business, he added.

"People make mistakes, and they're allowed to have a second chance. . . .

"I made another mistake. Big deal."