Remembering World War One

"Over the Trenches" as cover art

I took an early interest in World War One aviation, inspired by 50^th anniversary and again by 100^th anniversary remembrances. For the 50^th, Eddie Rickenbacker was still alive and Snoopy was busy chasing the Red Baron. In 2017, my wife Marella and I even visited some of the memorials in France and Belgium in 2017.

My painting “Eyes Above the Trenches” acknowledges the crucial role of photo reconnaissance during that war. The painting depicts the sequence of taking a photo, the printed image, and the resulting map in layers over the battlefield. Moving inward in the painting, the layer boarders are blue, white, and red, the same as British roundels.

As a reference to help visualize potential compositions and lighting, I built a scale model of a British B.E. 2c airplane. I persuaded Marella to pose in helmet, leather jacket, gloves, and goggles beside a cardboard fuselage.

The painting was included in the ASAA 2019 International Aerospace Art Exhibition at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. It was also used as the cover image for the Autumn 2018 issue of Over the Front, the journal of the League of World War One Aviation Historians.