High-flying art

You won’t find John Stahr’s artwork in museums, but he has elevated art to new levels — 51,000 feet.

That’s the service ceiling for Virgin Atlantic’s Dassault Falcon 900EX jet, which was the canvas for Stahr’s “Galactic Girl” project in 2015.

John worked with Duncan Aviation at its Battle Creek, Michigan, location to design and execute the artwork on Richard Branson’s jet. It took a combination of artistry and athletic ability to complete this project.

“When you look at the logo on Richard Branson’s personal jet, it looks like space art,” John says. “Like a big black planet in the middle of this nebula. So Richard Branson’s vision is represented with the iris of his eye. It’s 13 feet around on the tail and 22 feet around on the belly of the airplane. As soon as you see it’s an eyeball you realize that it’s Richard Branson’s eye because he has those piercing blue eyes.”

A time-lapse video shows John working on the Galactic Girl jet project on Duncan Aviation’s website.

“On a big project like that, it’s terrific to work with a company that’s set up for doing a business jet. They have the shop space. They have the guys to strip it and prime it and prep it and get it all repainted and ready to go and I just walk in and put the icing on the cake,” John smiles. “But I did have to strap on fall protection gear and safety gear to climb around the airplane to reach all these surfaces. And at 15, or 20, or 30 feet off the ground, you have to get over the falling issue and just count on your ability and balance.”

Branson’s jet is one of his biggest canvases to date — and it’s a long way from where he started.

After graduating from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design and illustration, John decided to branch off towards unusual canvases to create his airbrushed art.

He started on smaller, slower-moving canvases such as surfboards, fancy street racing bikes, and custom vans. In Eugene, Oregon, he crafted 900 custom paint schemes on luxury motor coaches, motor homes, and tractor-trailer rigs between 1983 and 2002.

In 1991, he earned his pilot’s certificate, and his attention turned to faster-moving canvases. By 1995 he began custom artwork and designs on aircraft. He became a member of the American Society of Aviation Artists and formed a company called Artistic Aviation.

John’s art appears on 150 to 200 aircraft so far. A Global Express Jet was the largest canvas. Fans of science fiction would appreciate John’s work on Mark Holt’s Millennium Phenom, which blends Star Wars, Star Trek, and Back to the Future details all over Holt’s Embraer Phenom 100 jet.

His personal plane is an IFR-equipped Van’s RV-8 known as American Angel.

This stunning canvas features a brilliant angel on the underside of the fuselage with her wings spread across the aircraft’s wings.

The angel was modeled after Patti Stahr, John’s wife of 16 years. The wings, tail, and fuselage are all decorated with angelic artwork and the images tell stories of loss, tribute, and hope.

“Our plane is like a flying Harley Davidson,” John says while at the 2022 SUN ‘n FUN Aerospace Expo. “My best girl sits behind me with her knees on either side and the plane is loud and it’s flashy and it’s fast and it’s fun. And heads turn when we go by or fly by. For people who can’t comprehend what sport aviation is, that’s kind of like what it is, a flying motorcycle club.”

Patti asked for a modification to the aircraft — a tray table to hold her iPad.

“He fashioned one out of metal,” she says. “It is a very simple design. It has a little hinge on the back with a spring so that when the iPad isn’t in it, it just folds up against the back seat.”

He asked what she wanted on the tray and Patti asked for the Coburg Hills near Eugene, Oregon, and a lit-up cross on top of the hill.

Close-Up Images of American Angel

A recently completed project was a Rans 21 Outbound. The owner asked for an adventure theme.

“He liked the blues and he liked the cream color so we conceived the compass rose for the tail and then basically a VFR chart that wraps around the fuselage,” he explains. “The chart that runs down either side is the chart of the Idaho backcountry flying where Johnson Creek is.”

“One of the next planes we’re doing is an RV-14 for a guy I met at SUN ‘n FUN in 2021 who was a TOPGUN F-14 instructor pilot,” John says. “We’re going to paint his plane to look like an F-14 Tomcat that’s losing its paint and revealing the Hellcat beneath. These are both Grumman aircraft and so you’re going to see this antique paint job of an airplane underneath that looks like the paint’s peeling away to show the real spirit of his airplane. Interestingly enough, the F-14 that’s parked out here in front of the museum — he’s the pilot who flew it in here. He was the last person to fly that plane.”

The F-14 is in front of the Florida Air Museum, which is on the SUN ‘n FUN grounds at Lakeland Linder International Airport (KLAL).

Art is Like Golf

Painting is not rocket science, but it is like golf, according to John.

“A lot of people can play golf and they enjoy it and they’re good enough at it, but there’s one-tenth of 1% of the golfers out there good enough to be professional golfers and play in tournaments and win enough money to make a career out of it.”

“I used to joke that I don’t do T-shirts because T-shirt airbrushing is a disposable art form,” John says with a sigh. “Even custom painting on airplanes, I’m kidding myself that it’s not disposable artwork, no different than T-shirt art. Because the reality is, unless your plane goes to the Smithsonian or goes into some museum where it’s preserved for decades for people to enjoy in the future, eventually someday, if someone is keeping this thing up, they are going to have to strip it down to repaint it and there goes your artwork.”

“I’d really rather people consider me an artist who considers airplanes his canvas than someone who will give them a good paint job at a great price,” he adds.

In the last few years, John has been busy painting airplanes, but in a different way. He creates paintings of people’s airplanes on canvas or portraits of them with their airplanes.

“I’ve done a few portrait-type pieces of artwork, like a wedding portrait for Kermit Weeks,” John reports.

John’s latest project is building a house and hangar at Love’s Landing Airpark (97FL) in Weirsdale, Florida. He and his wife hope to have it finished in 2022. Meanwhile, they’ve been moving across the country from Eugene, Oregon, to Florida, in stages.

You can learn more about John and his artistic designs at StahrDesign.com.