Ohio 100th Year of Flight

This painting was my collaboration with the great aviation artist Harley Copic. We split work in such a way that I did the people and Harley did all the hardware, the airplanes. This painting hangs in the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. It was created for the 100th anniversary of Ohio aviation. Flight started with Ohio with the Wright brothers, so the Wright brothers are depicted here in the center. Other great aviators from Ohio are depicted here as well. One of them is Eddie Rickenbacker who was in World War I. Another one is Addison E. Baker, who was in the Ploesti Raid, better known as the operation “Tidal Wave”. This eight feet long painting also includes world-wide known astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and a famous aviator Benjamin O. Davis who was the leader of Tuskegee airmen, who were the first black unit flying airplanes of World War II. They accompanied the bombers going to Sicily to bomb and their task was to guard these planes and they did a really excellent job. All these people were from Ohio, so this painting is a tribute to what they did in their lives.