Go West Young Man

Late last year, shortly after I finished the Gurney Eagle illustration, Doug Buchanan from Garage Graphics headed west to attend the grand opening of Morris and Welford’s new showroom in Newport Beach. Among the many people (including former F1 champ Jenson Button) in attendance was Pat Persichini, one of the folks from Morris and Welford. Doug and Pat got to talking and, at some point, Doug whipped out his cell phone to show him shots of the recently completed Gurney Eagle print whereupon Pat let on that he knew the Gurneys and would be happy to make an introduction. Wow! Talk about being in the right the place at the right time.

Soon after, an e-mail arrived from Evi Gurney saying that Dan and she were sitting at breakfast looking over the images and were very excited about the possibility of a full scale display. Amazing. The short of it is, an agreement was reached to produce a full-sized, backlit version of the new artwork and have it installed in AAR’s new headquarters in Costa Mesa. Needless to say, Doug and I were over the moon.

Sadly, as most of you know, Dan passed away in January just before we were set to ship the display. Neither Doug nor I expected to hear anything further when, to our surprise we received a note from Justin (Dan’s son and the head guy at AAR) letting us know he’d like to follow through on what had been started so many months before. Things have moved pretty quickly since then. The display was re-printed, pre-assembled to make sure everything was just right, disassembled, packed up, and shipped off to AAR. Justin has since had it put together and I’m headed out at the end of April to sign the print.

And that, folks, is the story of how my Gurney Eagle artwork ended up at AAR. You really can’t make stuff like this up.

I have about 20 prints of the Eagle illustration available in either the 12″ x 24″ or 18″ x 36″ sizes. You can also order it on the new brushed aluminum composite in sizes 23″ x 49″ or 29″ 59″.

Gurney Eagle fine art prints – from $185 – $235

Gurney Eagle brushed aluminum – from $625 – $825 . Please call or e-mail to order.