I worked late and produced this drawing for the new piece. I’m not sure quite where this interest in Amelia Earhart has come from, perhaps it started with my friend Fred Tonsing, who’s her nephew or something. I’ve been thinking about her mythical status, of course, for “The Aviator’s Dream” painting (here’s a photo), and it seeems to me that the romance about her that works for me is as follows: Amelia is a beautiful woman of very strong character, determined to conquer the elements by circumnavigating the globe. She leaves the ground in her airplane and is taken by the air element for its own, because she can’t belong to the earth any more, having become too much one with the air. Now she flies eternally in the ethereal sky of the other world.
In this painting the air element (represented by Amelia) reaches out toward the light, which is not visible in this picture. There’s a bare light bulb suspended on the left of the canvas. The t-square is a dry-wallers square – perfect for drawing composition lines onto large canvases. Keeps everything on the level.
