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Recently, I have read several blogs and comments put out by artists on how to put emotion into your paintings. I thought about this some, but for me, all my paintings have an emotional connection to this artist. Then it occurred to me that maybe the emotional connection is not evident to the casual viewer of my art and in some cases the viewer would not understand my emotional connection to my work without me telling them. So, I thought about doing something different for my blog and write about my emotional connection to my newly completed painting, “Taking Flight”. Maybe it will give you some insight as to my emotional attachment to this painting and my motivation to paint it.

 

My wife and I live in a pretty rural community just outside of Rock Hill, SC called Lesslie. It’s about a mile from where I grew up. Our back yard backs up to the woods and there is plenty of wildlife present almost every day. Over the last couple of years, we have had several red shouldered hawks hanging around in our back yard and I photograph them often with my Canon 7D Mark II Camera and a 300mm telephoto lens. You may have seen my painting titled “Back Yard Visitor”, that I painted a year or so ago. I completed it using one of these photos as a reference.

 

My camera is capable of shooting in continuous mode, as long as, the shutter release button is depressed, it will keep taking photos. To say I have taken hundreds of photos is an understatement, although, not all the photos are good quality. To catch these birds in flight, it is necessary to use auto focus which will focus on any object in the view screen. The extreme speed these birds possess make it difficult to get a good quality photo. You should also know the camera and my photography are necessary for reference photos used in preparation of my paintings if they are to be considered as “original” in national exhibitions. The artists must produce his/her own reference photos to be considered original.

 

What does all this photography info have to do with my emotional attachment to my painting? Nothing really, other than to help you understand the difficulty of capturing a photo of the exact moment the hawk takes flight and the importance of having an original photo. Capturing one of these hawks taking flight has proven more difficult than imaginable. For this reason, I purchased the copyrights to a photo from someone who is either a professional photographer or someone who was very lucky to capture one of these birds taking flight. You see, I don’t always care about some organization’s definition of original because not every painting I complete is destined for a national exhibition. (But when they are, I follow the rules to the letter.) In this case I felt the painting was more important to me personally.

 

Some of you may know that after high school I joined the US Air force and spent most of my time serving as an air crew member first on a C-130 Hercules and later on a KC-135 tanker jet performing inflight refueling. As a member of the Strategic Air Command and my flight crew, we accumulated thousands of flight hours and the importance of maintaining nuclear capability always required us to fly regardless of conditions. Didn’t matter whether it was a howling blizzard or a 70 mph cross wind, we flew on schedule.

 

Spending so much time flying can become mundane, but there was always a little rush when those 4 Pratt & Whitney engines spun up to life on that 2.5 mile runway and the demineralized water was injected into the engine intakes, cooling the air temperature and allowing the engines to ingest more fuel than normal for maximum wet thrust. All necessary to get the 200,000 lbs. of jet fuel onboard off the ground on a 2.5 mile runway. As the aircraft roars down the runway reaching the speed necessary to gain enough lift from the wings to allow the aircraft to lift the 350,000 lbs. aircraft gross weight from the runway. That moment when the aircraft losses contact with the ground is taking flight. Everyone on the air crew understands that this is the critical part of the flight and probably the most dangerous. The added weight of the 200,000 lbs. of jet fuel and the flammability add significant dangers not normally encountered with other aircraft types.

 

While watching my red shouldered hawks it dawned on me that they are no different than any member of my former flight crew. They take flight probably hundreds of times each day. They leave the safety of their perch, leaping into the air taking flight in search of their prey. They fly between 24 to 34 mph and can dive up to approximately 190 mph. These hawks fly at these speeds through the forest, in and out around the trees. With hollow bones, any collision would surely result in a broken bone and ultimately death. Always at risk from larger hawks and eagles, the red shouldered hawk uses his maneuverability and speed, but each time they take flight they are always at risk, much the same as my memory of taking flight in the US Air force. Painting the red shouldered hawk brought me back emotionally to an era 40+ years in my past when I too was at risk and the tip of the sword.