Alan Bean is the only artist, and the fourth of only twelve men, to walk on the moon. As a pilot, NASA astronaut, and spacecraft commander, he helped establish eleven world records in space and astronautics. But even as he set the world record of more than twenty-four million miles traveled in the fify-nine day flight of Skylab Mission II and served as the lunar module pilot for the Apollo XII moon landing, he saw it all with the eyes of a fine artist, having taken art classes and private painting lessons since 1962.

Bean’s passion is to share the awe of his experiences which he feels cannot be communicated through photos alone. He realized that if any credible creative impressions were to remain for future generations, he would have to paint them. Subsequently, most of his resulting artwork are historic events, more often than not enthusiastically supported and contributed to by his fellow astronauts and even the actors who portrayed them on television and in movies.

Adding to the scientific significance of his work, Bean will sprinkle actual moon dust onto his canvases or press the heels of a lunar spacesuit’s boots into the still-soft paint of his works, symbolizing the footprints he left in the moon’s surface 239,000 miles away. Bean’s remarkable experiences all came together in his book of words and painting, Apollo: An Eyewitness Account, which was published in 1998 to critical and popular acclaim.

Eastern Texas

Published by
The Greenwich Workshop
since 1987

Preferred medium: acrylic (and moon dust!)

Straightening Our Stripes

“I have been fortunate enough to see sights no other artist has ever seen. I hope to communicate these experiences by creating paintings -- documents of art -- that record mankind’s first exploration of another world. Space is our frontier and its exploration may be our generation’s greatest contribution to human history.”

Space