Alan Bean once walked on the moon. Now, the former U.S. astronaut recreates that “other world” experience on the painted canvas.
His works depict scenes of astronauts bounding across the lunar landscape during the glory days of the Apollo moon program when human beings first visited another celestial body.
In some respects, Mr. Bean's paintings are truly out of this world – tiny bits of moon dust are imbedded in the acrylic paint.
This week, a collection of his paintings went on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969.
And during the weekend, Mr. Bean will join other space veterans – including Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin and Michael Collins – for special events at the museum, which houses priceless artifacts from the age of lunar exploration.
Since leaving the space program in 1981, Mr. Bean has devoted his life to painting – the only one of the 12 moon walkers to choose such a path. The others went into business or other forms of government service.
But, at times, the transition to artist from astronaut has seemed almost as challenging as the journey to the moon itself.
Mr. Bean was a crew member of Apollo 12 – the second lunar landing mission, which took place in November, 1969. He became the fourth man to set foot on the moon. Mr. Bean, along with mission commander Pete Conrad, spent more than seven hours working on the surface, deploying experiments and collecting rocks and soil samples.
When the Apollo moon program came to an end in 1972, Mr. Bean initially became deeply involved in the United States' next manned space endeavours such as Skylab, an orbiting laboratory, and training for the first space shuttle flights.
All the while, Mr. Bean pursued his hobby of painting – creating mostly still lifes and landscapes. “When I was on the moon I never thought one time about art. I was thinking of doing my job as an astronaut,” he says.
Then, one day, he ran out of flowers to paint. “So I got out a photo of Pete Conrad on the moon and I started painting it. And then I realized I knew so much more about space and astronauts than these other things I was painting,” he recalls. “I knew what the helmet felt like, how the gloves worked, what the dirt looked like.”
Alan Bean took his inspiration to bring colour to monochromatic moonscapes from French Impressionist painter Claude Monet.
It dawned on him that he had a unique advantage over anyone else who might try to paint the moon – he's the only artist who has been to the extraterrestrial world.
If he had stayed with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Mr. Bean would likely have become one of the first U.S. space shuttle pilots. But he became instilled with a greater sense of mission to create an artistic legacy of humankind's first steps into the new frontier of space. “I said to myself, ‘There are a lot of young men and women here at NASA that can fly the space shuttle … I will never be missed.'” he says. “However, if I don't do this job [of painting the moon], it isn't going to get done.”
Mr. Bean set up a studio in his Houston home. Yet it wasn't easy painting the stark, colourless surface of the moon. He sought inspiration from the works of his favourite artist, French Impressionist painter Claude Monet.
Even before he left NASA, he made a pilgrimage to France to observe first-hand Mr. Monet's home and gardens in the village of Giverny, northwest of Paris. Mr. Bean was especially taken by a series of paintings the artist did of Rouen cathedral in varied colours.
With prints of Mr. Monet's paintings in hand, Mr. Bean headed before sunrise to the cathedral, hoping to see what the famed painter once saw.
