“We choose to go to the
moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that
we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and
one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” - John F Kennedy, September 12, 1962
Astronaut and artist Alan Bean is not only the first artist to
paint a world other than our Earth who actually went there, he
is the first in history to paint our Earth after viewing it from
space. His art’s significance as the original human interpretative
record of man’s first off-world experience will only increase
in its importance and value over time.
Those of us who were lucky enough to be alive during the Apollo
program look at Bean’s art and share the stirring of emotion,
pride, and the sense of awe that we experienced as we lived through
the fulfillment of President Kennedy’s challenge. The whole
world (the artist’s “fellow earthlings”) can now
look up at the moon in the night’s sky and know that human
beings were once there looking back at us.
“Over the years I changed my profession from NASA astronaut
to space artist,” says Alan Bean. “I have created several
paintings of earth and in the years since the Apollo 12 mission,
my astronaut eyes have gradually been replaced with artist eyes.
I now see the Earth in my mind’s eye as much brighter than
recorded by our cameras,” he says about A Jewel in the Heavens,
“and I paint the Earth in bolder colors now.” This
Fine Art Giclee Canvas not only takes us off this Earth to look
back upon it in the company of an Apollo astronaut, it is a ticket
back to one of the most fulfilling times in our lives.
Signed by Apollo astronaut / artist Alan Bean. |