Available for purchase at Langdon Hall or at Amazon.CA

What makes finding peace so special?

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    A beautiful high quality coffee table book that chronicles Steve’s painting journey from July 1st 2019 until July 1st 2021.

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    It is very special and rare to see the complete development of a unique artistic voice. The paintings in the book are presented in the order of their creation. Nothing as been left out.

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    See Steve’s paintings of military portraits, roundels and abstract landscapes that were inspired by aerial reconnaissance photographs from WWII.

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    Learn the background stories of each painting that inspired Steve to create such bold and colourful interpretations of the European landscape as seen by Aircrews from above during WWII.

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    This is the complete story of how one small step of creativity lead to the surprising development of a bold and unique artistic style.

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    Can be purchased at Langdon Hall or on Amazon.ca for $200 CDN

sneak peak of what’s inside

Military Portraits

When something is totally new to a person, they say to start with one step. However small the first step is the hardest of all.

My decision to paint 50 military portraits in the summer of 2019 is how I learned to paint. It’s 100% by trial and error.

You’ll see each painting I created in their order of production, learn the backstories of each character and watch as my unique portrait style develops over time.

Military rulers and combatants have been portrayed in specifically military dress since ancient times. In early Roman sculpture, generals and often emperors were depicted with armour and the short military tunic. Medieval tomb effigies often depict knights, nobles and kings in armour, whether or not they saw active service.

roundels

I had been researching military uniforms as part of my portrait series. Military parade uniforms are about drawing attention to a specific group of people while highlighting their individual and collective achievements. They’re the “Hey, look at me!” part of military culture.

Most of the military’s use of colour, texture and geometry for battle is designed to camouflage. The exception to that rule in the field is the roundels used on military aircraft and other vehicles.

They appear as targets at first glance. Much like a parade uniform they scream, “Hey look at me!”

In the summer of 2020 I turned my attention to those images of brightly coloured, easy to recognise geometry and their history.

the from above collection

The use of aerial photography rapidly matured during the First World War as aircraft used for reconnaissance purposes were outfitted with cameras to record enemy movements and defences.

At the start of the conflict, the usefulness of aerial photography was not fully appreciated, with reconnaissance being accomplished with map sketching from the air.

Frederick Victor Charles Law started experiments in aerial photography in 1912 with No. 1 Squadron RAF using the British dirigible Beta. He discovered that vertical photos taken with 60% overlap could be used to create a three dimensional effect when viewed in a stereoscope.

This would create a perception of depth in cartography that would dramatically improve information derived from aerial images.

The From Above collection is imagined as viewing the ground below from the POV of the courageous young airmen who participated in the liberation of Europe.

The From Above Collection contains the following series of paintings:

  • The Day Before D Day

  • Experiments in Blue

  • Keukenhof Gardens

the day before d day SERIES

D-Day was the boldest, riskiest and most anticipated operation of the entire World War II European Theater.

To succeed in the Allied invasion of France, Allied commanders needed detailed information about prospective French coastal landing sites and surrounding areas. The entire outcome of the war rested on this invasion, the long awaited massive first step to liberate occupied France and the rest of occupied Europe.

By early 1944, the Allies nearly ruled the skies, having pushed most of the Luftwaffe air operations back into Germany, and were able to photograph all pertinent shoreline and adjacent areas almost at will, although still subject to fierce anti-aircraft fire.

While fighters escorted bombers ever further into Germany to destroy military, industrial, transportation, and communication targets, American and British aerial reconnaissance (recce) missions provided millions of photographs detailing every aspect of the forthcoming invasion sites and the German defenses along the beaches of northern France.

the experiments in blue series

Following the fall of France in 1940, German submarine forces started operating from bases along the Biscayan coast.

As the war intensified, upward of 100 U-boats sailed to and from massive concrete-roofed pens at Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, and Bordeaux every month. These undersea predators proved extraordinarily difficult to defeat and by 1941 were sinking a large percentage of the war matériel, fuel, and food that Great Britain needed to stay in the war. Something had to be done about Germany’s U-boats, and soon.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, in charge of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command, put his Operational Research Section (ORS) to work on the problem. The ORS consisted of British scientists and mathematicians charged with advising operational commanders on technological solutions. Already, ORS’s out-of-the-box thinkers could claim credit for developing a reliable magnetic detonator fitted to aerial depth charges and a more effective camouflage pattern for low-flying patrol aircraft.

Their work on increasing the lethality of air-delivered antisubmarine munitions through improved explosive filler and shallower detonation settings had, by the middle of 1941, begun to pay dividends in angry North Atlantic waters.

The keukenhof Gardens series

In 1629 winds of change were whistling across the Flemish flatlands and through Dutch gardens. No longer was the home focused on a practical kitchen and herb garden.

Following the Italian fashion, the Netherlands were creating formal gardens decorated with geometric shapes, arbors, loggias, and trickling fountains — anything to provide a backdrop for the new plants that were finding their way into the country. Foremost among them was the tulip. In the early seventeenth century, even before tulips were fashionable, gardens were changing.

Flowers, previously the providence of the physician and the cook were being "botanized" and revered for their decorative qualities. Holland was about to become the bulbs spiritual home. The tulip, found most abundantly in the Tien-Shan and Pamir-Alai Mountain Ranges in central Asia, had spread to China and Mongolia before it reached Europe.

Turkish gardeners were renowned for bringing the tulips that now decorate the Netherlands to bloom a thousand years ago. By 1637, the business of bulb dealing was spiraling out of control: one bulb sold in 1637 for 6,700 guilders, equivalent at the time to a house and a garden on a smart Amsterdam canal, and 50 times the average annual income.

A rise in theft of bulbs would form the basis for the flower industry of Holland's future.

The young men of the Allied Air Forces would witness the revitalization of Holland's gardens from above as Dutch botanists worked to rebuild their gilded pathways of the past.