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lying is a way of life for many people. Some are pilots, instructors and flight crews. Some build airplanes, repair or maintain them, and there are a multitude of support people who sell tickets, handle baggage, fuel the planes and are involved in one way or the other with a myriad of occupations created to support the aviation industry. And, of course there are aviation writers and aviation artists. They all have one thing in common - a love of flying.

One of the more prominent aviation artists is Nixon Galloway (1927 - 2003) who started his career in the 1950's. Nick's interest in aviation was a long-standing one, as both his father and grandfather were pioneer aviators in the Los Angeles area in the twenties and thirties. He spent many happy childhood hours flying with them in Wacos, Swallows and Stearmans.

After serving a stint in Naval Aviation in WWII, he took up flying, but with the abundance of pilots coming out of the services, he decided to pursue a career as an artist and enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He was a freelance artist for over fifty years, working as an illustrator, doing advertising art for companies such as Lockheed, Northrop, Allied-Signal, Hughes, Boeing, Bendix, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and NASA. He was active in the Air Force Art Program and has contributed more than thirty paintings to the Air Force's permanent collection.

Nick received one of his most interesting assignments during the mid 1970's when he was commissioned to do a series of crop dusting paintings for a calendar.

He said, "I gave myself a crash course in CROP DUSTING 101 by flying up to the San Joaquin Valley and talking to operators at several small airports. I read everything I could find on it at the library, bought several books, and wrote to the major manufacturers of Ag Aircraft for their brochures. I was given the job on August 11, 1975. They asked me to do twelve paintings for them by October first, which works out to about two paintings a week! Needless to say, I didn't watch much TV that month. They also asked me to do two illustrations for ads, a Piper Pawnee and a Stearman, and graciously gave me another week to paint those.

"I sure learned a lot about barns and crops during this project. I painted barns that were round, square, octagonal, rectangular, with roofs that were gambrel, gabled, hipped, mansard, and shed. Wherever I traveled I'd take my camera and shoot pictures of barns, silos, fences, cupolas, and weather vanes. Sometimes the client would request that I show a particular crop, so I had to learn how to paint cotton, corn, rice, wheat, and orange groves."

His crop dusting images included biplanes, monoplanes, and helicopters in all kinds of situations. Even a converted B-17 was the subject of one of his paintings. The calendar was so popular that he was commissioned to do a different set of paintings each year for five years. From that series came the concept for his biplane and barn series which he started in the early 1990's. The series proved to be quite popular because of its strong nostalgic appeal.

The first in the series was an open edition print called "Barn Stormer." It is also a popular computer screen-saver image that many are familiar with. The print shows a crop duster pulling up after dropping a load on a young crop. The vegetation ends at the red barn and the pilot tries to cover as much of the row as possible before pulling up. Two youths, watching from the hayloft, are wide-eyed as they see the plane coming straight towards them, their hearts in their throats as the plane comes closer and closer. Their bodies tremble from the vibration of the roaring engine and from the blast of propwash as the pilot pulls up scant yards from the barn.

After World War II, many surplus military aircraft were sold at incredibly low prices. Among the aircraft offered was the PT-17 Stearman. This rugged trainer was powerful, easy to maintain, and inexpensive to buy and to operate. As a result, many crop dusting services snapped up these trainers and modified them for business use. During the fifties and sixties the most likely crop dusting plane you would see was the Stearman.

Another print in Galloway's series is "SnowBird," a limited edition print that shows a green Stearman sitting in a field. A barn and other sheds in the background are just some of the nostalgic touches Nick added. The snow-covered plane isn't really out of its element. During the off-season some crop dusters found work following snow-covered roads looking for downed power and phone lines, thus helping utility companies restore service to their customers quickly. This is a working plane, and when the snow stops falling, someone will take a broom and brush the snow off and it will start earning its keep again. The purposeful pilot will be wrapped in layers of clothes in a futile attempt to stay warm in the open cockpit.

"Wings over the Heartland" is another Galloway Stearman print depicting a barn somewhere along California's coast. The famous, or infamous, Mail Pouch Tobacco sign painted on the roof of the barn brings back memories of a time when many barns across the country served as billboards for advertisers.

Another colorful biplane and barn scene by Galloway is "Tiger in the Fall." It depicts an orange and yellow Tigermoth coming in to land in a farmer's field. In the background are rustic barns with tin roofs and a bright red Coke-a-Cola sign. The trees are in their beautiful red and orange fall colors. And, of course, the people in the barn are taking the time to watch the graceful Tigermoth gently float to earth. You can almost hear the ticking of the motor as it idles and see the pilot make a last-second correction before he lands.

His combination of planes, people, and rural scenes have a nostalgia that has been very popular and led to Galloway doing a series of paintings depicting biplanes that have been used for Christmas cards. Many of you have very likely either used or received some of them.

Nick's work has been exhibited in the White House, Pentagon, Kennedy Space Center, Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, RAF Museum, EAA and Air Force Museums. He has won awards for his aviation artwork in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Washington, DC, and Dayton.

Nick was an "Artist Fellow" member of the American Society of Aviation Artists and was a past president of ASAA. He also held memberships in the Aviation Historical Society, Air Force Association, Naval Institute, the EAA and Red Barons. When not working at his easel, Nick could be found on the ski slopes or racing his sailboat in the waters off the coast of Southern California.