Approaching Aircraft Artwork

Aeroplanes, by and large, are good looking machines. Few can approach the elegance of the Spitfire, but even your everyday airliner has it's own grace, backswept wings attached to a smooth, white fuselage that glints in the sun from any angle. Except for the underside.

Like most Londoners, I live under a flightpath and that means that all I really see of these machines is the underneath. Invariably gun-metal grey and covered in carbuncles, the underneath of a plane resembles the underside of a ship. Not for us the joys of tail-decal spotting, every plane looks just like the last: grey and ugly.

How much more interesting it would be if airlines invited artists to decorate the underneath of their planes. Great splashes of colour could be marching through the skies, each vessel different from every other - an individual. The endlines lines of aeroplanes would liven up the grey skies instead of trying (and failing) to blend in with them. Up and coming artists would have the opportunity to hang their work on a huge canvas where all the world can see it, a high-profile high-gallery.

Of course they would be constrained by the shape of the aircraft, an unusual shape for a canvas which would require creative solutions - and therein lies the challenge for the artist. The fun lies in getting out of their cramped studio and painting a 60m canvas with a spray gun.

I will be waiting in the garden with a surface-to-air paintball launcher for the first airline to use this space for advertising.