Alan Bean learned to paint in night school while he was training during the day to become the fourth man to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 12 mission. After 18 years as an astronaut and eight as a pilot, Bean decided to resign from NASA in order to devote himself full-time to painting. His reasoning was simple: "I'm the only artist that's ever been anywhere except this Earth. I ought to try and do something with this."


To mark the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, we caught up with Bean to get his reflections on all things lunar as well as his thoughts on his new book, "Alan Bean: Painting Apollo."

Check out Bean's moon remembrances, and a few of his paintings, after the jump.


Saying Goodbye to Space
Bean: "When I announced I was leaving to become an artist, some of them came up to me and said, 'Now Alan, do you think this is a worthy way to spend the rest of your life? You have all this training, do you really think you should go off and be an artist?' And then others came up and thought it was a pretty good idea. Now they all think it's a good idea because they can see I'm recording history they were willing to risk their lives to make.

"I hope I live a long time. I have a lot of stories to tell, and if I don't tell them they'll be lost forever."


Moondust in the Paintings
"As I started using more beautiful colors, even though the moon was gray, I started saying to myself, These paintings are looking real feminine, and the moon is a rugged place. Maybe if I started putting texture in -- like all other artists do -- with my pallet knife and ends of brushes. One day after I'd been doing this three or four months, I asked myself what am I doing this for? That's what Earth artists do. I've got a hammer I used on the moon. I've got a core tube bit here. I've got some moon boots I can make shoe prints in my paint.

"By the way, I was supposed to leave the hammer on the moon. I ended up with it in my pocket and gave it to NASA, but they said I could have it. So I kept it awhile, and I thought this should probably go in the air and space museum. So I lent it to them. [Later,] I wrote them and said give me back my hammer. When I'm dead and gone, it can go back to them.

"After I had all this great texture, I thought, Man, I wish I had some moon dust. I was looking up there on the wall at the emblems on my suit that they did give me -- the flag and all that -- and I'm saying to myself, Boy those are dirty. In a negative way ... well, they're dirty with moon dust from the Ocean of Storms! If I were to cut those up and mix them in my paint, then I'd have moon dust. I made up my mind -- I'm devoting my life to these paintings, so I'm going to make them as special as I can. Now in every painting there are pieces of moon dust. "



Reflecting on Apollo
"Apollo was an impossible dream that humans, Americans in particular, made come true. It was heroic. When you go 240,000 miles from Earth in a tiny spaceship, we saw what happens on Apollo 13 when something goes wrong. If that had happened earlier by a couple of hours, or later by a couple of hours, they wouldn't be back. Everybody who went to the moon is a hero, and I'm not bragging. If those people who put that suit together don't put it together right, or don't put the lunar module together right, you're probably going to die. And you've got to be able to say I think making these advancements in science is worth the risk."



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