ARTY-FARTY FRIDAY #3

Arty-farty Friday #3

We're back !

I'm sitting facing this Friday's Arty-farty subject. It's an oil painting by none other than HeWhoKnows(aka my husband). He painted it sometime in the early 1960s and called it "The Powers Trial". (A larger view should be available by clicking on the picture).

When I first noticed this painting it was stored in a closet with a pile of others a young HWK had done many years ago. I liked it immediately and brought it out to hang on the wall. I had no knowledge of the subject matter, I simply liked the shapes and colours. I later discovered that the main figure represents Francis Gary Powers, the U.2 pilot shot down while flying over Soviet Union airspace on May 1, 1960, sparking one of the greatest international crises of the Cold War. HWK said that for some reason the trial of Powers affected him deeply, and this painting was more of a doodle about it. He just started drawing shapes on canvas one day and ended up sketching directly with oil colour.

I'm not sure the detail will show clearly on computer screen, but the scales of justice appear in the centre, some heads of observers in the background, representing the eyes of the world upon the proceedings, and a small depiction of Powers' wife in the lower left square. The figure to the left represents an attorney.

Gary Powers was born on 17 August 1929 in Jenkins, Kentucky. On the date Powers was shot down, 1 May 1960, his natal Pluto at 18* Cancer was being opposed by transiting Saturn at 18* Capricorn - such an opposition between two powerful planets might well be significant here. Saturn represents the law, limitation, and possibly imprisonment. Pluto, I think, is connected with espionage - it's the modern ruler of Scorpio, which is said to represent among other things, secrets and spying.

When Powers returned to the U.S.A. (as part of an East/West spy-swap) he was criticised for not ensuring that the revolutionary plane was destroyed, or killing himself with a suicide pin or pill, Powers was cold-shouldered by his former employers at the CIA. He died in 1977 at the age of 47 when a television news helicopter he was piloting crashed in Los Angeles. On May 1, 2000, U.S. officials presented Powers' family with his posthumously awarded Prisoner-of-War Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the National Defense Service Medal.
Info. from http://www.answers.com/topic/francis-gary-powers