Mountain Home Air Force Base
1989 Commissions
It is a great honor for me to have almost two dozen of my paintings purchased by the United States Air Force. In 1989 the Mountain Home Air Force Base was constructing a new hospital and looking for art for a huge facility. They saw my work in galleries and ended up purchasing two 3-panel triptychs of the Sawtooth Mts. and commissioning many more for a total of 23 paintings.
The long 7-panel panorama work of the Sawtooth Mts. was requested to fill a wall in the cafeteria/ conference room. They asked if I could do “something with mountains for a room with a 50 foot wall”. Yes, indeed “I could” I said. But my studio then was very small, so I made seven 4 foot square panels of canvas on stretcher bar frames and hung them 9 inches apart to fill a good part of the space. The oil paint wraps around the sides of the canvas producing the effect of a continuous image when looking from an angle. Below are photos of the individual panels, plus below that are several more of the paintings they commissioned.
The Air Force Base asked me to create paintings for the emergency waiting room, the dental office, the Top Flight Surgeon’s office and many more. For the physical therapy department they asked for some History themed pieces, two of which I have shown below, plus three more of my favorite examples of these commissioned pieces.” - G.P.L.