2015 ASAA International Aerospace Art Awards

Sputnik-1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was a 58cm (23 in) diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio signals. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957.

Model airplane building in the 1950’s was a very popular hobby. Growing up in our nation’s capital, I was fortunate to be able to compete in model building contests sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce.
Pictured in this painting, I am being awarded a First Place and Best of Show trophies in 1954 at the age of 11 with my model of a B-25. In the painting is also featured a balsa wood model of the Stearman PT-17 which was constructed for my grandson’s bedroom. Fun, once again, to smell the paint and glue!

Used exclusively in the Atlantic to patrol over the Panama Canal, these PBM-3S Mariners were painted in over-all white with upper surface of gull gray. Wingspan: 118 feet, weight empty: 58,000 lbs. This painting uses an overall “white” theme to represent the aircraft in the fog present at the time.

I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only kid inspired by Chesley Bonestell to become an Aerospace artist. His iconic paintings that appeared in Life magazine, Collier’s, and many books depicting man’s conquest of space not only put us there, it implanted the vision that all of this was possible. Not only was he an artist and architect, he was a brilliant and realistic Hollywood matte painter, whose work you won’t notice in movies like “Citizen Kane.”

On December 28, 1952, South African Air Force C-47 Dakota 6832, departed Durban on a 1,500 mile flight to the Comoros Islands to retrieve a dead fish. The fish was a Coelacanth (SEE-lah-kanth), a prehistoric fish that was thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago. The Comoros Coelacanth was only the second one ever discovered. The first had been caught in East London, South Africa in 1938. Dakota 6832 served with the SAAF for another 40 years before being retired in 1992. Today, 6832 is at the SAAF Museum in Ysterplaat. She has been restored to her 1952 colors and is known as “The Flying Fish Cart”.

The DC-3 popularized air travel in the United States. Transcontinental flights saw shortened times with fewer refueling stops. Production of civil DC-3s ended in 1942. Military versions saw production until the end of World War II in 1945. General Patton credited this aircraft with being a major contributor to the victory of World War II. Miss Virginia was named to honor both the military and the state of Virginia. Miss Virginia was the name of the P-38 that shot down Japanese Admiral Yamamoto in 1943.

I painted “Duxford Cat” from sketches I made and photographs taken while on a visit to Duxford near Cambridge in 2010. The aircraft was being prepared for its pre- season flying display routine practice. This PBY-5A Catalina is a regular on the European display circuit. Since this is a very white aircraft, I have tried to reflect the surrounding color into the white surfaces and added the Fords tow-tractor and team member to assist the composition.

A Gulfstream G550 climbs to cruising altitude through late afternoon clouds.

Under a soft winter sky, a Cessna 206 and de Havilland Beaver rest in the calm waters of Kodiak, Alaska’s Trident Basin.

The soft glow of the Aurora Borealis settles gently on the Cessna float plane sitting on an Alaskan inlet during a spectacular display of the Northern Lights.
The work is executed in three layers of colored glass, a technique called “plating.” The front layer of glass is backed up in the area representing the water with a second layer of the sky glass, and a third layer of royal blue glass behind it to give a muted tone to the “reflection” of the lights in the water.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin once said, “Exploration is wired into our brains. If we see the horizon, we want to know what’s beyond.” In 1903, the Wright brothers stretched that horizon. A mere sixty-six years later, humans viewed the earth from the moon. Our desire to venture out beyond our boundaries, to seek the impossible, to shoot for the stars, continues to push our horizon line ever farther. What once seemed impossible is now within reach.

I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only kid inspired by Chesley Bonestell to become an Aerospace artist. His iconic paintings that appeared in Life magazine, Collier’s, and many books depicting man’s conquest of space not only put us there, it implanted the vision that all of this was possible. Not only was he an artist and architect, he was a brilliant and realistic Hollywood matte painter, whose work you won’t notice in movies like “Citizen Kane.”

I saw this beautiful Ryan PT-22 Recruit at the Diamond Point fly-in near Sequim, Washington. Detail studies of PT-22s are a bit cliché, but this was a very challenging and rewarding project. I can still hear the “ poppity, poppity, poppity” sound of that little Kinner radial.

Mark Pestana
“Laura’s Preflight”
24” x 36” Acrylic

As the sun burns away the dawn fog at Laredo Air Force Base, Texas, 2Lt. Laura Kurtz performs a preflight inspection on a Beech T-1 Jayhawk. Upon graduation from USAF pilot training, Lt. Kurtz was selected to pilot AC-130U Spectre gunships

“Mission Maid” was a veteran B-17G with the 457th Bomb Group, based at Glatton. Ship 021 arrived in the UK in December 1943, and on New Year’s Day 1945 completed her 75th mission. She was one of the few camouflaged ‘Forts to remain with the group into 1945. Credited with eight German fighters destroyed, this veteran finished her tour of duty with the Air-Sea Rescue service. Returning to the USA in late 1945, she fell to the scrapper’s torch at Kingman, Arizona.

The Boeing 777 is a long-range, wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It is the world’s largest twinjet and has a typical seating capacity for 314 to 451 passengers, with a range of 5,235 to 9,380 nautical miles. Commonly referred to as the “Triple Seven”, its distinguishing features include the largest-diameter turbofan engines of any aircraft, six wheels on each main landing gear, a circular fuselage cross-section, and a blade-shaped tail cone. American Airlines currently owns 67 of these aircraft.

Larry Manofsky
“Capt. Colleen Nevius – The first woman aviator to graduate from United States Naval Test Pilot School”
48” x 24” Mixed

Larry Manofsky
“Capt. Colleen Nevius –
The first woman aviator to graduate from
United States Naval Test Pilot School”
48” x 24” Mixed

Colleen Nevius graduated from U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River in June 1983 as a member of Class 83. This painting reflects milestones in her career: First female member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Navy Commendation Medal, National Defense Medal, Meritorious Unit Commendation, and Navy Battle Efficiency. She became one of the first women to deploy aboard a U.S. warship—LHA 4, USS Nassau—as a member of helicopter detachment Combat HC 6 Support.

General Bernard Adolph Schriever the man known as the “Father of Air Force Missiles and Space” started his military career in the army field artillery, then transferred to the Air Corps. He won his wings at Kelly Field in 1933 flying Keystone B-4 bombers. In World War II, he flew 33 missions as a B-17 pilot. In 1954 “Bennie” commanded a group of USAF officers responsible for creating the Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile program. At 6’4” Cadet Schriever was obviously too big for his A-1 flight jacket.

“Stan’s Colorful Steed” features SE 5a’s of 40 Sq RAF in May of 1918. The scene depicts the SE 5a’s as they are getting ready to pull the chocks for a sortie. The SE 5a in the foreground is that of Major Stan Dallas, the highest scoring Australian Ace of WWI. Dallas flew this SE 5a, D3511, late in the war. It bore a distinctive camouflage pattern which was not used on other SE 5as.

One of the most precarious gun positions on a World War II aircraft, the ball turret gunner protected the vulnerable underbelly of both B-17 and B-24 aircraft. After take offs and before landings the gunner would enter or exit the turret.

In late 2013, I made a trip with my friend Fred Gunther to research the B-58 Hustler. Our destination was Grissom Air Force Base, just outside of Peru, Indiana. Back in the early 1960s, it was known as Bunker Hill Air Force Base and Fred was stationed here. His job was maintaining the electronics of the B-58s that were based at there. On a cold windy day in late October, Fred and I spent 3 hours crawling under and over one of the few remaining B-58s in the world, taking many measurements and hundreds of photos while a KC-135 performed touch-and-goes in the background.