An Astronaut’s Journey, by Alan Bean

A few years back, just after ‘N Sync singer Lance Bass was denied (denied!) his chance to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, I was lamenting to a close friend that NASA should really budget to send musicians, writers, and painters into orbit, so that they could create art relating to the experience. Hours later I got an email from my friend’s little sister, a Space Camp alumna, pointing me to the works of the fourth man to walk on the moon, Apollo 12 lunar module commander Alan Bean, who has made a post-NASA career as a painter. Given the nearly monochrome appearance of the lunar surface, his moon paintings are really quite colorful; the ones I like best usually have bootprints and crater-rings pressed into the impasto. Not exactly the best artist, but probably the best to have walked on the moon thus far. “An Astronaut’s Journey (Jack Schmitt in motion),” (14x21 in., textured acrylic with moondust on aircraft plywood, 2003) by Alan Bean, AlanBeanGallery.com