Nearly completed a set of works combining American Icons and The Stars and Stripes with or without verses from the United States national anthem. There are ten in all, including the last few, The state of the empire, The Empire strikes back – Iwo Jima, and Washington on horseback is unfinished. Lincoln has been repeated twice to include a coloured version of the Stars and Stripes.

I do find that even the blown up images of the art on this site does not do the artwork Justice, the detail of the stripes is not so obvious and some of the affects of depth are lost at this size, most of these images were created at fairly large sizes, almost 3 foot high and 6 foot across.

The intrinsic link between the State National anthem and the flag is the driving influence in the conception of this body of work. I do not know how many national anthems sing about their state flag. This is why the lines from the anthem are used in the artwork. The artwork itself is not easy to produce and there are many processes and subtle uses of techniques to add depth and detail.
In a real way I have to paint the stripes on to create the illusion of depth and to highlight aspects in the image. There are some quirky details in some if not all of the images, the one that springs to mind because it is out of place in the real sense, is the footprint on the moon used as a crater in the “From here to Eternity” piece. “Liberty” was the first image and I enjoyed creating the stripes on this work, followed by Capital, which needed a lot of preparation work . The image was balanced by using the image of the left on the right. The step back in perspective needed converging stripes for the first time and variation in colour for the more distant parts to the image. Followed by the Rushmore image “Four Good Men” which was similar to Liberty in techniques used. So Buildings and statues seem to be the thing.
Not many flags lend themselves to this type of art, the fact that the stars can be used in the sky as the back drop is very handy, leaving the object to be picked out in the stripes. I have left parts of the image as is, to add to the effect or as a border to an image when necessary.