2008 Aleta Pippin Exhibition

Based on the poem “High Flight”
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

During high school I happened upon John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight”. It so moved me that I was brought to tears. They weren’t tears of sadness, but tears of joy. I resonated with Magee’s words and the sensation he must have felt as a 19-year-old American Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot in 1941. Imagine – flying, soaring above the clouds; something very few people had experienced at that time.

For some reason, the poem resurfaced in my memory and I chose to do my 2008 Exhibition at Pippin-Meikle Fine Art based on that poem. I selected passages that moved me and created emotionally-charged paintings reflecting my emotion, translating words to color and movement.

Enjoy –

“High Flight”

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace