Aviation and Military Artist

Sir Ernie Hamilton Boyette

Once upon a time......

The truth is that I was born on a sweat potato farm in welfare in Green Cove Springs, Florida. My family raised chickens and rabbits and agricultural foods. My father worked at the local Navy base which was neighboring Green Cove Springs. William E. Boyette, my father collectively fathered seven children with my mother Frances N. Boyette. Thus the need to have a small farm to feed the children. When the farm, work and William’s health was good then things where fairly good at home.

I was a late baby for the family. There was ten years between me and the last sister. Father died when I was two years old. I do remember at the age of four having to hold a chicken by its legs as my mother chopped off its head for the Sunday dinner. One time my mother told my sister Pat and me to go execute the chicken. I think it was my first time. My sister and I were uncomfortable with the task fumbling terribly. Mom came out quite mad and snatched the chicken as one could say "ringing its neck". From what I understand my mom had a lot on her hands. My older brothers went to work in town five miles away. Mother stood over every child with a compassionate mandate that we would get through this and you will finish High School. Each child did in fact contribute and went to school and all graduated. Life was very hard for my brothers and sisters after my dad died. I was a baby and remember very little.

Mom was a child of the depression and had to drop out of school after the seventh grade to go to work in order to help support her family. Being poor for many is not an option. It is a fact of life. It is a fact that for many, no matter how hard they work, nor how honest, it will all be for naught. My mother drilled into my mind to be prepared. Don’t just work hard, work smart. Keep your head down but keep looking up. And I learned that when you see an opportunity, take it. It was like she was saying, “Life dealt me a bad hand, but now I know the game, let me show you.” Mom was my best friend. Hard to explain for a macho type guy like me but mom was not just a mother, she was a thinker. Her knowledge was broad and vast. We could talk. I caught her off guard many times as a child with some of my “life’s questions.” I asked questions the other children never thought of, because they were children. I was different. Mom knew I was different and we had more of an intellectual relationship than a mother-son type thing. We cohabitated.

We were still poor when I began working at sixteen years old. Even though mom had been trained as a nurse’s aid we were barely able to get by on what she made. How sad that society pays the person on the bottom that does the hardest work under the worst conditions the least.

Every pay check I made I took home and turned it over to mom. With this she paid the bills and provided me with shelter, many great home cooked meals, blue jeans, cheep tennis shoes, white socks and pull over shirts from J.C. Penny’s with a pocket on the front.

My mother was a self taught artist and painted wild life. I encouraged her as much as possible. She tried to paint a little of everything. When my mother passed away in 1985, she left me everything which included her art supplies and some blank canvasses.

I thought I would figure out how to paint one night in 1986. I was bored and always wondered what it was like to be an artist. To be able to create through painting or molding clay. I had a good job but I was becoming to hate it. I pulled mom's "art stuff" out and contemplated painting.

First I had to figure out what I wanted to paint. Mom had books on how to paint. I looked through Painting Wild Animals and said to myself, “I’ll definitely consider this.” Looked through Painting Old Barns and Houses, Again I said to myself, “Ok let’s see what else there is.” Painting Land and Mountains, Painting The Sea. "Interesting", I thought. “How to paint the Nude, "Eureka!, I Got it, I liked naked women.”

I did not paint anything from the book. I did not even use the book as a reference other than get an idea of a subject. I grabbed a Play Boy magazine and chose a side profile of a woman putting on lipstick.

Now is where I must admit that I did have some art training in my past. In elementary, middle, and high school I took art classes because they were available and I needed at least one good grade. I found that if you start a painting that was going to take a lot of time and dedication, it would probably not get finished. My mom tried to get me to paint but it all started and ended like this.

Start the painting with an explosion of ideas and enthusiasm. Wait a day or so for it to dry so you can add another layer or subjects.

Paint a lot more, make changes. Wait again for it to dry so you can do more. Paint a little more.

Interest in the painting then for a young boy would start to wane about this time. Let it dry some, and paint some.

The artwork always ended up in the closet, unfinished.

I started quite a few paintings that were never finished.

The lesson I learned was that if I start some sort of artwork, I need to do it quick before I loose interest. The only works I completed as a child were the one’s that I was able to do in one or two class sessions. It was fun, but I never thought I would ever consider art for anything other than a diversion.

So as we would say, what I did on that fateful (or frightful) night in 1986 was to pick a subject. I traced the girl from the book and then enlarged her trying to keep the proportions of the figure correct. I then simply drew the girl on the canvas and just painted her. Total time was about two hours counting the time I looked through the art books, a Play Boy, painted and cleaned up. Painting size is 16x20".

It was enjoyable to paint. I did about ten paintings over the next couple of years. It was fun. My artwork progressed in an odd way. I decided to continue to paint subjects against the white back ground and started adding more to the work. With the next girl I added a towel. In the next a bowl of fruit, then I started adding backgrounds. All of my girl paintings are classical and polite. My goal was to slowly get myself wrapped up in the artwork to a point where I wanted to do more. Finally I was doing full backgrounds.

Working my way from simple to more complex worked for me.

Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.

This is probably my fifteenth or so painting.

This is one of my first paintings as I really got serious. I did this in honor of one of my favorite artist. Frank did a lot of Conan book covers plus science fiction and fantasy art.

I love this stuff and want to do more in the future. Note the blood streaking from the raised axe.

This is the only wild life painting I produced. My mother had painted this same artwork for my brother-in-law and sister.

I liked it so much I painted this for myself, but now this painting has become lost. I put it up for sale in a restaurant and the restaurant closed!

I also tried several portraits.

It took a few paintings to get the hang of most of it.

Below the eyes start getting better.

These are in honor of an artist named Nigel or something like that. These were done on colored matt board.

One pink and one red. Hence, background in place. I drew these from a book about the artist and used acrylic prints.

These took only an hour to plan and do both. What is so special about this I thought?

Then I tried other stuff. The above was done with crayons in about 30 minutes.

This was charcoal on tan matt board in about 30 minutes.

I enjoyed doing different stuff but I had to make a decision. Am I going to play at art, or is it possible to do more?

How about money? Any money in art? The night I made up my mind to pursue art I concluded that a venture into the art market could not be any more complicated than anything else I have tried in the past.

Believe it or not but the decision I actually made was to put all of my artwork in the closet and shut the door. I did not touch another paint brush for over two years. I had started a new company, had a few promising employees and calculated that if I wanted art I could afford to buy what I liked.

Then my day job got worse. I changed my mind. I pulled mom's art stuff back out. And when I say my job got worse it really did. One night I found myself standing in the middle of my kitchen cursing and crying openly and uncontrolled. I was bellowing, I was hurt. I started shaking my fist at the ceiling screaming and cursing the foul butt-heads I had been working with. In my crying and screaming curse words at the ceiling I swore to God that night that in ten years I would be able to walk away from my job and make my living solely on the works from my pen, camera and paint brush. I had not written anything seriously since a creative writing class in Jr. Collage. I was at best an above average photo-buff, and I was where I was above with my artwork. This was a big step, but I gave myself plenty of time to properly polish my yet unknown talents.

I needed a product and a market. Was I going to do light houses? Horses? Children, mountains, birds, or what? I really needed a master plan. I had been buying aviation art prints for the last several years from great artist like Robert Taylor and a few others. This was a new dimension in the art market. There always had been a military art market but not like the emergence of aviation art starting in the late 1980's and early 1990's. It became a fad and I was spending my money on limited edition prints that were autographed by my aviation heroes. I thought that being able to buy a really nice artwork autographed by a famous aviators was the best deal around.

Transgressing a little, the first magazines I saw as a child (pre-school) were the Post, Life and Time magazines my mother would subscribe to. The subjects they covered filled the mind in my small head with wonder. Windows to the world. Here I was stuck on a run down farm in the country on welfare, a prisoner. The magazines displayed flawless color photographs of gold masks of the pharaohs and the ebony carvings of men with hawk heads and some with the heads of jackals. This lit my mind on fire. I was totally convinced at the age of five that I too was from this era. For a five year old that was a major decision to make. I did every school report on the Sun God and other pharaohs from third grade to the sixth grade. I read every book on agent Egypt the school library had.

Then my life changed again. I read "God is my co-pilot" by Robert Scott in the sixth grade. I was not a recluse. I was not the sissy pussy-boy who hid in the corner and read, I was very involved in sports and had lots of friends. I just used all my spare time to keep a book handy. Then I read every war book I could find in the libraries. However I need to add that I did read the occasional war book during the third to sixth grades. These were just books on the war, not any one person in particular. I was really moved by the movie of Sergeant York, so I read the book but still liked the ancient Egyptians. My reading became furious after I read Robert Scott's book.

Civil War, Revolutionary War, French Revolution and Napoleon. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, God is my co-pilot. I read them all. I read every war book at each school I went to all the way through tenth grade. As a matter-of-fact, I kept a list of all the books I read in the ninth and tenth grade. In the ninth grade I went to Fort Caroline Jr. High in Jacksonville, Florida. They had a good library and then the next year I attended Terry Parker High School. Again, another good library. On the list I made, which I still have, I wrote down the name of each book as I completed it. The list also included the books and a few short stories I had to read for school. If I read it, I wrote it down. In two years I read 72 books. I was not especially fascinated with the wars of the Spartans and Romans we covered in World History, thus I never pursued any in-depth research in those areas. Then my hormones kicked in and my mind turned to music, girls and politics. If you know me then you know that I am more interested in politics than the first two. In the eleventh and twelfth grade I was more aware of politics and classic rock & roll and was leaving the WWII studies behind.

Before I changed in the eleventh grade, I knew the names of every ace and how many aerial victories they had, German, Navy, Air Force, Japanese. I loved it. So this was it for me at the time. Now here I was in my forties standing in my kitchen and all my youth came back, the passion for military and the air war in particular. I was going to paint airplanes! Now this is where everything gets real interesting. I did not know any aces from any war. I had no veterans in my family. No one to turn too, but that was fine with me because I enjoy research more than anything. I picked up the phone and started the process by calling aviation museums.

In my day job I was trained in marketing, and in June 1991 I decided to try my hand at art as a business and used my marketing skills in trying to make a living with my artwork. I was convinced that I had talents that I had not yet developed. I also knew this was the time for me to do something different. I swore that in ten years I would be making my living from my artwork, writing, and photography.

In starting on this path I hung out with friends less. A few made fun of me for painting airplanes. They thought they all looked alike. At this point in my life peer pressure was laughable. Nothing was going to detour me from my goal. I got magazines on art marketing and read them from cover to cover. Especially articles about the blossoming military art industry. I started looking up museums and got in contact with their gift shop buyers. As I released new prints I sent them samples.

It took a while, years to get shops to start carrying my artwork. It is hard to market a series when you only have one print. It is still hard when you have two prints. It was not until I had about seven to ten different prints and had a proper selection that the museums and galleries became interested in my artwork and started ordering. It took five years before I had that many prints in inventory! The first year I published two prints. The second year I did another two. The third year I published four and then eight prints the next year. Then it all happened very quickly. However, art was not paying my bills. I was still holding down two jobs getting this art business started. I was paying for publishing the prints myself. At first the return on investment was painful. It was my call, and I did it. I poured every penny I earned and then some into new prints.

Yet what I just wrote reflects the mechanical and financial theory and application executed as planned. It does not at all reflect what I was doing. I was documenting the war exploits of my boyhood heroes. I was meeting the men I had read everything I could find back when I was in Jr. High School. Yes, I even made plastic models of their aircraft when I was younger. I already knew their lives and adventures but only the bits and pieces I gleamed from history books. Now I was sitting across from great Americans like George Gay interviewing him on every aspect of his infamous flight.

In the sixth grade when I read God is my Copilot, I was never interested in sports heroes again. I knew that Joe Namath was a great quarterback, but I reasoned, "Could Joe get the ball down field, if people were shooting at him?" There you will find the measure of the man. I had already herd personal stories from war veterans. Many were gallant. Many were fearful, even glorious but some were made up or embellished.

When I started painting again and out of curiosity I took some night classes in art by the local neighborhood artist. She had a great reputation, but I found that every one just liked her a lot. She was a poor teacher. Yet she was the one that had us do some charcoal, some watercolor, and mixed mediums. I thought this was cool but I was soooo bored. My series was already doing fairly well and I was trying to expand my knowledge of art in general. I always had my class assignments done in one or two class sessions when it took everybody else a month. One night the teacher asked us to do a self portrait. I watched everyone stumble into their approach so I stood up, took my paints and canvas back to her bathroom, looked in the mirror and in one class completely painted myself. No I am no Goya, or Van Gough, but as far as I am concerned my talents are just fine. Below is the painting.

I did this in a two hour class. I can do much better now.

Below is a time line of my publishing. Enjoy!

Step one. Secure a client base. I took an armful of my artwork out the local Naval Aviation bases.

In the spring of 1993, I received my first commission from an F-18 Squadron stationed at Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Florida.

Commander John "Lites" Leenhouts employed me to do a black and white Limited Edition of their squadron aircraft.

I still have some of these prints available for only $35.00 each.

This was Commander John Leenhouts personal fighter.

Later that year in November I released a print for the Blue Angel air show at Cecil Field, Jacksonville.

Cecil Field was celebrating its 50th Anniversary.

I still have some of these available.

In 1994 I started my series "Famous American Aviators". My first prints were truly my heroes, here is George Gay.

George was one of my first aviation heroes. I put off my series until I found him.

I wanted George to be the first in my series of Famous American Heroes.

George Gay and the Artist in 1994

George was the first in my series of Famous American Aviators. It was also sad because George died during the time I was working with him.

I knew his story inside and out. I read about him for the first time when I was in sixth grade. He was my hero and I wish that I had more time with him.

My print was the last print that he signed.

"Tex" Hill is on the left, the artist, and Robert Scott in 1996.

These two guys where a hoot! Bob Scott wrote "God is my Co-Pilot" and boy-o-boy did he need God as his co-pilot because this guy was wild! Wild in the word of fearless. And when I mean fearless Scott flew into the face of death over and over and came out with only a few scars and a book full of stories.

Tex was one of those Navy pilots that was bored with his job and when the chance of joining the Flying Tigers and going against the Japanese came along he jumped at it! Flying under extremely poor conditions under insurmountable odds was exactly what he was looking for and he found it! Tex is a Tiger!

I am so lucky to be able to work with our great aviators. It is even more special to be able to call them my friends. To be around these great men and women is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced.

Between January 1991 and December 2000 I painted no less than 150 paintings. From March 1993 to September 2000 I published 42 Limited Edition prints along with 36 poster prints. That is a total of 82 individual pieces of art. If I am not mistaken, I published more artwork than any other American artist in the same period of time. To properly clarify this I used my money, marketed the series of artwork by myself with no help from any other person, gallery, or publishing company. All of the other artist that were widely published I found were backed by galleries with agents, or publishing houses with several agents. I an trying my approach the art market without an agent.

I enjoyed working with the Tuskegee Airmen.

Tuskegee Ace, Lee Archer and the artist.

Back when I was planning my series I swore that I would include the Tuskegee Airmen. I wanted to tell their story. In 1991 when I was planning this series there were no shows or movies about the Tuskegee Airmen. It was years in the future before the History Channel and Public Television would have documentaries about their units. I always wanted to know more about the units of African American fighter pilots. All of the history books in the past had very little about the Tuskegee Airmen and the WASP's. I found a paragraph here and a paragraph there but no real information. However I was completely determined to tell their stories and it was ME that publicly announced that Lee Archer was an official ace and the only ace of the Tuskegee Airmen years before the American Ace Association declared him an ace. After hearing Archer's story, I was convinced he was an ace, and I was correct.

I also enjoyed meeting and working with one of our premier women pilots of WWII.

The Artist and Florene Miller.

Again, when I was planning my series I was determined to tell the stories of the WASP pilots during the war. As with the Tuskegee Airmen there was little written about them in the past but the History Channel and Public Television had documentaries about both groups in the mid 1990's as my prints were being released. If I am not mistaken, my print signed by Florene is the only limited edition print to this day that has been signed by one of the first 25 pilots personally selected by Jackie Cochran to be the first women pilots to serve the United States Army Air Force. If you want to know more about the WASP pilots then please read my writings about Jackie Cochran.

I really enjoyed the foreign aviators that I was able to work with.

Countess Maria Caproni, the artist, and Italian Ace Ugo Drago in Italy.

It was a delight to go to Rome, Italy and meet one of the last living Italian aces. The people were really impressed with the fact that an American would be interested in the history of the Italian Air Force. I learned so much in that week I was there. Countess Caproni's family had built most of the aircraft during Italy's entry into aviation right up and into the first World War. She gave me a book with all the aircraft that her families business had produced. I was impressed.

B-17 pilot Charles Brown, German Ace Franz Stigler, and the artist.

B-17 pilot Charlie Brown and German Ace Franz Stigler actually meet in the skies during the war. When Stigler came upon Brown's B-17 it was so badly shot up that Franz actually escorted the crippled bomber back to the English Channel where Charlie and his crew landed safely back in England. Just earlier that day Stigler had shot down two B-17's! Charlie continued flying bombing missions and Franz continued shooting down B-17's! No telling how many more times they passed each other in the air. This is a true story.

To read their story click here.

In the fall of 2002 I was commissioned by Cook Cleland's family to paint all three of the F2G Corsair racers that he flew in the late 1940's at the Ohio Air Races. Cook won the Thompson Trophy in 1947 and 1949. I had worked with Cook in 1997 with a print of the SBD dive-bomber he flew in WWII. It was a blast to work with him in 1997 and I jumped at the chance to work with him again.

In March of 2003 I was officially knighted as a “Knight of Vision” for my efforts in telling the stories of our famous aviators. The gentleman who knighted me had watched me for several years. By chance I had worked with several aviators that he knew personally. I had in fact met Joel on several occasions and liked him a lot. He was a real jokester and fun to be with. He was present with Cook Cleland when I met with Cook on several occasions. He asked me if I played air combat video games and I said yes. After meeting with Cook Cleland one day Joel "Cat" Catron invited my brother and I to his home to play a round of Pacific Air War Gold by Microsoft. It was a blast to watch a seventy year old flying a P-51 Mustang in aerial combat on the computer. My brother John who was with me was impressed. Yet Joel was not very good and he admitted it. Joel flew his Mustang not quite straight but kind of cock-eyed. I said to Joel, "Joel, you are flying a little wacky-jawed." He said, "I know, I flew just like this in real life!" Joel managed one or two victories during the war but Joel was lucky. A Zero pilot shot him down and he lived to tell the tale. It was fun to take turns playing the game, I did not know that "Cat" had been knighted and could knight other people.

After the war Joel served the Air Force in England where he befriending Lord Mountbaton and the Royal Family. "Cat" had been Knighted in 1947 by Lord Mountbaton and the Royal family. His Knighthood allows him to bestow the same to others as he sees fit. Since 1947 he has only knighted 256 people. He was impressed with my sincere interest in telling the stories of our great aviators. This may sound like a casual event and I am making it so, yet it was very serious and important. And quite Royal and legitimate.

This was not an honor I worked for. It was not something I strived for, nor was it anything I sought out. It was not a goal or an ambition. I was completely unaware that I was being watched and considered for this honor. I simply received a phone call one day from "Cat" telling me that I had earned it.

The Mission Statement for a Knight of Vision is:

Honor Above Self

and

The Enlightenment of Mankind.

I appreciate this honor. My official name is now

Sir Ernie Hamilton Boyette

I now sign all my original paintings as,

Sir Hamilton

If you are wondering if this honor has gone to my head, the answer is no. There was no financial compensation that came with the title. It has not, nor will it ever make me wealthy. I admit I do appreciate being knighted. Nothing more. I am a normal person who was born poor in a family on welfare. I have had to work for everything I have. No silver spoon here. I have never been given anything. I am glad to be alive. That is enough for me.

I enjoy honoring our men and women in uniform who represent and defend our country. When I was 15 years old I tried to join the Army and volunteer to go to Viet Nam. They said I was too young and booted me out of the recruiting office after catching on to my trying to lie and join! On September 11, 2001 after watching the attack on the Twin Towers, I got in my car and drove to the US Army recruiting office in Orange Park, Florida and tried to sign up. The recruiter told me that I was too old! I was 48!

Even though I have never worn a uniform, most all my mannerisms are as military orientated as if I served my whole life. And I mean from the beginning when I was a child I knew the facts of life were honor, loyalty and self awareness based on strength of charter. My mother was the one that taught me that. However, it came naturally.

And here I am now!

20 Years of aviation art publications and historical research!

My artwork is marketed nation wide in aviation museum gift shops.

Several catalogs including Historic Aviation market my limited edition prints in their nation wide publications. My artwork has also appeared in the Aviation History magazine two times.

My prints are also marketed world wide. Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Canada, and France. I thank you all.

In February 2007 Amazon.com added my artwork to their extensive line of products.

Thank you for your time and enjoy my web site.

I appreciate you considering one of my prints for your collection or a gift for a friend.

And please, tell your friends about my efforts and my web site.

Sir Hamilton

107Arthur Moore Drive

Green Cove Springs, Fla. 32043

904-282-4198

Sir Ernie Hamilton Boyette

I still like the ladies!

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Started 2-7-07

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