Sam Brooks - Mural Artist Statement
RSL (Port Pirie Sub Branch) Inc.My aim for this painting was to focus on the local people of Port Pirie and their involvement in the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS). Something unique about EATS was the massive scale and impact this had on our victory in WW2, yet it goes unknown in the eyes of the general public.
For this reason, I always want to be as informative and as accurate to history as possible to do justice to the training, the weapons, the planes and the people. I believe a good piece of public art needs to entertain and captivate whilst still educating.
The first panel tells the story of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilots and Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) engineers on the left, their physical location through wartime maps (Port Pirie) and the use of iconic training planes that were used for bombing and gunnery training on a Port Pirie district coastline ideally suited for this purpose. - No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School.
The second panel is the “hero piece” where we symbolise the graduation of these pilots, with a small reference to war itself having the pilots sprinting to their fighter planes. Also showing the RAAF emblem and roundel for the period and Skip the mascot dog.
The third panel is a focus on aerial observation school, showing the pilots leaving their stations as the aerial observers’ tools take their place for the bases second designation. – No. 3 Air Observers School. Also showing are 22 poppies of remembrance for the airmen who lost their lives in service at Port Pirie.
The whole colour scheme is based on the weathered maps and their browns and oranges are a reference to fighter pilot maps. When I was in Wagga Wagga, I was fortunate to meet a relative of a fighter pilot that showed me an old leather map, which was always kept inside the pocket of a pilot, it was made of this beautiful old worn leather because if they happened to go down over the ocean, their map would be intact. I thought it was beautiful as it was telling of the danger these people went through.
