DRAWN & QUARTERED
Graphic Arts As Literature
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Keith Ferris was introduced recently, simply and accurately, as "the greatest aviation artist of all time." The event was a small dinner at Hickam Air Force Base, thrown by the Daedalian society of military aviators, and for Ferris, it was a bit of a homecoming -- he was born in Hawaii at the old Tripler Army Hospital in 1929 and spent most of his young life next to the fabric and metal biplanes parked on Ford Island, where his father was an Army aviator. Allergy led to high-flying
career in artBy Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comFerris always assumed he'd follow in his father's footsteps and become a military pilot, but an allergy ended that dream. He instead became a commercial artist -- always working within the sound of aircraft engines -- and in 1960 was introduced to the Air Force Art Program. In exchange for flight time and access, artists create canvasses for the Air Force's collection.
Now in his 70s, Ferris continues to fly regularly with the Air Force. His blue flight helmet is decorated with the silhouettes of aircraft he's flown in, and he can give the crew names and flight histories of every aircraft he's committed to canvas.
"For my 10th birthday I was given a ride in my father's airplane and immediately realized that things look totally different from the air," recalled Ferris. "On the ground you can see maybe a hundred yards clearly; from the air, with even a little altitude, you can see 25 miles. It's a whole new perspective, and light changes colors dramatically."
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Distance mutes the palette, and Ferris says that in the air, everything becomes a shade of gray -- "unless you're flying alongside a Navy aircraft!" As a young art apprentice, Ferris worked as a lithography stripper and opaquer, and learned that all colors in printing are derived from yellow, magenta, cyan and black."And actually, we're talking yellow, red and blue, with black as the mixture of all three colors. Your eyes tend to average colors at a distance -- making them grayer -- and so I do all my painting just using those three colors, mixed right on the palette. It also makes for a cleaner reproduction, something that my corporate clients appreciate."
Although Ferris has flown more than 300 hours in high-performance military aircraft -- including tagging along on combat missions -- he says "it's dangerous to give the impression you do this all the time. It's a rare, wonderful experience."
At one time, mistaken for a professional pilot, he was even given the controls of a pre-production commuter airliner at the factory and flew the multimillion-dollar plane in a test hop. He didn't give his real status away until he had successfully landed and parked the aircraft.
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