December 2007 Feature Story:
Rick Broome: Aviation Artist

Story by Sue Van Namee

Rick Broome’s art hangs in the White House, in the homes of former Presidents, movie stars, senior government officials, airline headquarters, various museums and foundations, to say nothing of fans who revere airplanes and his work. When interviewing an aviation artist, one expects to see paintings, perhaps the work of some fellow artists, a studio filled with paints, brushes, partially finished canvases, and a bit of mess typifying their creative talent.

Rick asks if I’d like to see his studio. Well, what is one to say? We pass through a normal looking family room and into a normal looking kitchen. Billie, Rick’s lovely wife, leads me through the door off the kitchen where one would expect to find the garage. She explains this is Rick’s studio. So, I’m ready for skylights, art and paintbrushes. I did not expect to step through the kitchen door and meet, nose to nose, a United Airlines Boeing 727-222A sitting inside a studio.

A couple of words starting with “Holy” fall out of my mouth before I can catch them. To say that the 727 dominates the studio is an understatement. Again, Rick defers the purpose of my visit, his art, to show me the cockpit, the seating area made into a den, the view from the windows and the galley door leading to his old studio. It is miniscule compared to the new studio on the other side of the plane.

Billie explains they picked up the fuselage with a crane, hoisted it one hundred feet up and over the house to the backyard. Then they took off the back piece, which now serves as an outdoor workshop, and proceeded to build the new studio around the fifty-foot forward fuselage section.

Just acquiring the airplane was a project in itself. Bill Duff, an old friend and airplane salvage broker, helped them review over two hundred 727s. He found this particular one at a movie studio, purchased when United declared bankruptcy. The price was high. It was a late model mid-life airliner, virtually rebuilt to a “Zero time” airframe. It only had 1200 hours since a complete “D Check.” Everything except the fuselage metal was new including cabin windows, instrumentation and cockpit seats. Billie notes they didn’t buy everything. The cockpit windows and the passenger seats cost thousands of dollars each. They passed on those.

Then there were the logistics. How does one deliver an aircraft fuselage to your local neighborhood? On a flatbed truck. The ninety-foot fuselage cost $30,000 to ship from the California movie lot to their Colorado Springs home and install on structural mounts. There was a police escort, and the fire department was present as it was hoisted over the house.

Quietly, I ask Billie how she felt about this new piece of décor. She says Rick always wanted a 727, but she never thought he would really do it. On the other hand, she concedes, Rick had recurring dreams of his new studio going back forty years. Enough sketches and notes to fill a file cabinet preceded the addition of the 2200-square-foot studio to their home. With a shrug, she indicates it’s all part of being with Rick.

Descending through the forward passenger entry door down the air stairs to the studio, we enter a beautiful space with skylights and windows looking out on the backyard. A massive counter contains the tools of Rick’s trade, with ample space for producing large pieces. Scattered around, chairs and tables are covered with research books, drawings, prints and other materials related to his work.

The studio walls display his art, and I am finally able to quiz him on his flying background and art. As a teenager, Rick sold art to pay for flying lessons. He laughs when explaining he had a flying certificate before his had a drivers license. He worked as a lineboy for Kensair, soloed on his sixteenth birthday, and was checked out in nine different aircraft before he was seventeen. Rick became the “Golden Boy” of the Denver aviation community. His mentors include Colorado aviation greats such as United Airline Captain Ed Mack Miller and Elrey B. Jeppesen. His nine flight instructors gave him free lessons. The aircraft salvage dealer, Bill Duff, paid for Rick’s aviation fuel.

Rick took Billie flying on their second date, and they married in 1965 right after high school graduation. She followed his dream to become an airline pilot, and they moved to California where he enrolled in the Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Program at Northrop Institute of Technology. Rick landed a job with Continental Airlines as a baggage handler. Billie worked full time to put him through college, only taking off when their first child was born in 1968.

By age twenty-one, Rick had his Airframe and Powerplant ratings and went to work for United Airlines, the youngest mechanic in the Los Angeles terminal area. In 1969, Rick was accepted as a flight officer candidate with United. At Billie’s insistence, he deferred the coveted “Seniority Number;” he needed to finish college first.

Meanwhile, United gave him unlimited Additional Crew Member Authority (ACM) allowing him to build several hundred hours in the DC-6B. Notified by the chief pilot to take the 1971 Boeing 727 Flight Officer class, Rick and Billie moved back to their native Colorado. Unfortunately, his class was cancelled, and he was furloughed with 526 other United pilots.

Waiting for recall, Rick had almost a hundred commissions for paintings. He kept displays in the crew lounges at the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago airports. Billie mentions he also sold Corvettes part time, even though he was painting full time, significantly enhancing the family budget. She says he sold a dealership record of 165 Stingrays to the USAF Academy Class of 1974, a record yet to be broken.

Being close friends with cadets and Air Force Academy personnel in Colorado Springs, Rick “invented” the first class painting. The Broome family owns the copyrights, trade dress and intellectual property rights of the paintings. Now a tradition, the paintings allow the Broomes to share with hundreds of cadets their passion for flying. Rick meets with class representatives before their senior year starts. They establish their motto during their tenure and have general ideas of what they want. For example, the class of 2005 wanted five Thunderbird F-16s flying over the infamous “Bring Me Men” sign looking toward the cadet chapel.

There are secrets hidden in these paintings. Rick tells me it’s called “trade dress,” hidden, copyrighted vignettes. They are not obvious to the casual eye. He takes me up to peruse the Class of 2005, “To Match My Mountains.” I study it, looking for what looks like a mountain to be something besides a mountain. The chapel — what is hidden in the chapel? Coming up with nothing, I turned to Rick, standing behind me with a big smile.

He shows me wings flying, jump wings, squadron patches and other cadet icons. He notes that if a cadet is lost due to tragic circumstances, he includes their name and initials in the background. Once identified, these vignettes are visible, but if you blink, they may be gone again. Rick says he enjoys making each painting something special with this trademarked technique and leaves it to the owners to reveal its secrets.

Creation of a painting is a surprising combination of technique, material and artistry. Rick only paints on a linen canvas, which runs $110 per square foot. He explains it will last 2500 years. At my raised eyebrow, he acknowledges he may not be around that long, but he hopes his paintings will be.

Then there is the style, called Old World Flemish, the way Rembrandt painted. He explains that it is a carefully layered transparent paint application drying to certain colors. The first layer is followed by another, and then another, until the effect he is looking for appears. Each layer must dry to see how it enhances the painting. The technique requires a well thought-out strategy even before the first layers are applied.

Rick wonders if he mentioned the black light. I respond with vague recollections of my college dorm room in 1973. He draws my attention to the sixteen-foot section of the left wingtip of his 727, suspended from the ceiling. Like a kid with a toy, he turns on the red wingtip beacon and then points up under the wing. Inset within the wing are a series of lights with special frequencies, displaying various light-spectrum qualities. He flips several on and brings over an unfinished painting. Intense color literally jumps from the canvas, as though a high beam illuminated it from behind. That he can achieve two entirely different paintings within one, is surprising, but it’s obvious he is quite accomplished at the technique, which he calls “Starlite.” Rick adds he invented a frame with hidden lights, included with every commission. Details explaining the strategy, techniques and process are available under “The Starlite Story,” on his website, www.rickbroome.com. The time to accomplish a painting depends on the research, the people, the requirements and myriad other things. Because of a large backlog of requests, collectors are required and are willing to wait several years for a Starlite.

How does he go about accepting a commission? It starts with an introduction to the people, the owner, the pilot. Rick wants to know what connection to flying this person has. Can he sense the love of aviation, the passion to fly or possibly the loss of the ability to do so? I propose my father, a World War II pilot, blown out of B-17, who continued to fly into his 80s. Rick thinks he could be a candidate. Ideally, he would want to meet my father, learn of his experiences and the setting for a picture of a B-17.

Next is research. From a pricing standpoint, the less he has to do, the lower the cost. Although Rick acknowledges vast research techniques available to him (books abound in the studio) the more a client can provide about the airplane series, the year, the squadron, the situation, the better.

Is there more? The dream, he tells me is very important. I pause. My father’s dream? Rick chuckles and says “no.” The dream is for Rick to have. He says he always has a dream when the time is right for a painting. Billie chimes in with “at all hours.” As most have us have dreams that vanish with the morning alarm clock, I question how he remembers them. He says he does, even when returning to sleep.

This brings us to Rick’s working day. A passion to paint, apparently, can be hard to control. While Rick studies his thumbs, Billie informs me he will paint at all hours of the night, sixteen hours at a time when the spirit moves him. They both admit that, for about thirty-five years, it wreaked havoc with their family life. Rick now has doctor’s orders to sleep with the rest of the human race.

Asking him again about commission requests, he says he turns down as many as nine out of ten. Because of the time involved and his interest in capturing the history for people or a company, he feels he must paint from the heart. How much connection he feels for them, how much passion they have for flying, how much detail they bring to him all add to the possibility that he might accept a commission. Anticipating my next question, Rick pulls out a professional, independent, certified appraisal of one of his works: $65,000. He acknowledges they are not all worth that, but it certainly lends credibility to his skill, technique and style.

Rick is not without significant recognition, having been a finalist for the NASA Artist in Space Program in the early 1980s; inducted into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988, the youngest at the time; and creating covers for over one hundred magazines and books. He has kept track of all of his commissions and paintings and, to date, he has completed over 2500 originals.

Of course, most artists are not overnight successes, as was the case for Rick. I asked if he ever did art shows. A roll of the eyes from Billie gives me a yes. She informs me of not one, but two Winnebagos traveling with their two children months at a time to shows all over the country. As Rick grew in popularity, he received invitations to the better ones. He is quick to say Billie did it all. The summation is, she put the house and entire family in the Winnebagos, and they hit the road. Billie shrugs as though it was all in a day’s work.

With paintings hanging in such prestigious places as the homes of five presidents, the White House, the Pentagon, five airline corporation headquarters, the Air Force and Naval museums, it makes sense Rick and Billie have met some very famous people and have a few stories to tell.

Apollo XV astronaut, Jim Irwin, was a close friend of Rick’s. Collaboration by the two over the years resulted in Rick painting over two hundred space and futuristic scenes. Their friendship and discussions strengthened Rick’s innate talent and enhanced his ability to paint, as he says, from his heart.

Rick mentions that John Denver was one of his favorites, just a normal kind of guy that came over to the house. Then there was Colin Powell, who dropped by off and on over the course of a couple of years. One day, he bumped his head on the old studio’s black light fixture hard enough to draw blood, which dripped onto a canvas. Rick produces the painting and points out the deep red in the corner. Paint masks any obvious blood, but it certainly gives the painting a special identity. Rick smiles saying Colin always wanted him to “paint something Army green” instead of Air Force blue.

President Clinton attended the 1999 Air Force Academy graduation, and the class gave him a Broome painting of Air Force One flying over Falcon Stadium. Clinton, fascinated with the painting, took it aboard Air Force One on his return. Its disappearance sparked rumors the Clintons removed it from the White House, but it now resides in the White House National Security Agency conference room.

Rick and Billie’s son, James, runs the family’s business and many of Rick’s paintings can be seen on their website, www.rickbroome.com, as well as a vast inventory of published art available for sale. They will soon be updating the website to include at least 300 new reproductions of both new and older paintings including Starlites. Subjects will feature military, airliners and general aviation airplanes.

On my way out through the living room, I find myself surrounded by not only stupendous paintings, but the sense there is more here than an artist and his family. Here lies a passion for flying that many will never know, a camaraderie with anyone who is willing to talk about flying, a multi-faceted individual willing to pursue his artistry despite great odds.

In the end, Rick’s exceptional gift is his vast reservoir of talent and his willingness to share it. Owning artwork by Rick Broome is to share in the true passion of aviation.

Sue Van Namee is a free-lance writer. A former USAF officer, she lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.