VFR

24"x48"     acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas
 

Currently on display at the Plains Art Museum and may be bid on at the Spring Gala, May 5.

My original idea for this painting was to show one of the antique toy planes in my collection flying above a real landscape. Then I found this old sectional chart from my days as a student pilot and the idea for the painting came together. The thing I love about maps is that they’re created to make us think we’re looking down on the world from some high vantage point, just as a pilot would see it. I have used this very chart to navigate my way over eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota in a small plane. With the addition of some everyday objects and a lot of child-like imagination, suddenly, I was back in the cockpit on a bright, sunny, VFR kind of a day, lost in the wonder of flight.