05/22/2026
Accidental Creation Of A Legacy Painting - “The Last Flight” by Daniel Vancas (c)
"Do not lose hold of your hopes, dreams or aspirations... For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live."
Daniel Vancas
“Last Flight” by Daniel Vancas (c) of the Pan Am Boeing 314 Clipper Flying Boat - I’ve been told that sometimes there are happy accidents. I can’t report that was wholely true for mine. It was painful and for a time completely debilitating. This injury happened in 1991 at a construction site. It change my art path from a secondary career, first as a building contractor, then back to my first love as an artist and creative.
My first inspiration for this painting was hearing a story about a Pan Am flight that originated at Treasure Island (At San Francisco) bound for New Zealand, with a first stop in Hawaii. When it left Honolulu, it was just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Then because of hearing of reported and pending attacks on other Pan Am and military bases on Wake Island, Guam, and Midway, Captain Ford elected to not turn back to the mainland. He will go on to complete the New Zealand flight. Afterwards fly an unscheduled, and often uncharted flight around the globe. It was not without its difficulties. Often facing confused local authorities, there were issues of aviation fuel shortages, mechanical breakdowns, and being shot at. The 12 Boeing 314 clippers were important for strategic defense, and as such Captain Ford kept mostly radio silence, and little was known of its whereabouts.
Though not on the minds of the pilot, crew and what (unknown) remaining passengers that may have refused to get off in New Zealand, the unscheduled flight made and broke new flight records. It also plotted the possibility of new airways and landing in areas for Pan Am flying boats!
When they arrived unscheduled to New York City, its flight controllers, and civil defense authorities were shocked. They thought the plane was lost, a ghost ship of the skies! Panic ensued. Some speculated that the large plane may have been hyjacked, and was now full of bombs. As a result they had to circle for hours at a safe distance outside of the city before they received a landing clearance on the the Hudson, then taxi to their Pan Am facilities.
Later the crew and plane made the last flight back to Treasure Island at San Francisco to complete its unplanned flight around the world.
Since opening my art studio in 1992, most know me as the artist of vintage glamour, and pinup art. In that I have made a name for myself. Some of you may think this painting is a departure. This painting is not, but a starting point. A kind of physical and emotional self therapy to see if “I could”, on so many levels. Starting this painting 1993, and ending 18 months later in 1995 it consists of over 250 layers of paint. I would typically work on it 2 to 4 hours a day between my pinup art commissions which paid the bills.
Just as it it multiple layers, so to are it’s many reason to have made it.
I made this painting because it was not only an icon of American ingenuity, it was an ambassador of flight, a symbol of the American recovery from the Great Depression. I related to its history it represented a new hope for a nation and its “can do” spirit that it inspired. A necessary message of recovery to a broken nation crawling out of the depression. And it was this same revival spirit led this “great generation” to a world war victory.
But to me Pan Am clipper planes was much more than that. So much so I wrote a more in-depth article about it, and my painting. These appeared in several news papers and aviation magazines.
I started painting it in 1993, and finished It 1995. I used over 250 layers of painting and glazing tint techniques. I did this to make it glow in the dimmest of lights. As a result it is impossible to photograph its amazing changing color play.
I consider this my greatest painting for several reasons. First being for its emotional content, and the ideas that inspired it. Simply put, flying into a rising new hope. The mystery of life traveling into the unseen future. For you see, it was not just a painting. It was private statement. A revealing kind of self portrait. Only two years earlier I was bedridden for many months after breaking my neck in a construction accident. An injury that changed my life. No longer a fully able young man, and suffering with chronic pain and migraines, my life had changed. I now focused all my energy on my create arts.
Because of this injury and 18 months of physiotherapy, I had lost my home, a 20 year career, and my construction business.
The fallout of these financial losses, long hours of opening a gallery, and becoming an artist full time, was just too much a strain on my relationships. My ex-wife and I retreated. She started to choose hide in alcohol, I chose my art. I could not reconcile chronic drinking in a partner. She could not accept me throwing myself into my creative passion. We agreed to part. I lost my marriage, and family. One could say the relationship ended because of the financial, and physical stress the accident caused, or her new drinking, or even my creative ambitions. But that would be too easy and simple. Relationships do end from stress, and ours had several including a savage attack at a local park of my young teenage daughter that also altered all of our lives. A final last unpredictable, and unfortunate blow to her, and all of us.
What was left in the ashes of our family, was my broken still painful life. Still I had hope, and my art. This was my Phoenix, an accidental legacy painting. A emerging symbolic and subconscious self portrait of an artist trying to survive. And with it I had plotted a new uncharted path out of dark troubled waters to a new hope, a new future as I opened my first studio, and then Vanguard Gallery in Carmel. A long journey to financial freedom. I started as a broken man, and emerged as an artist. Little did I know that with the future new successes in the highly competitive world of pinup and glamour art, I would fall into another firestorm survival fight over financial and IP territory. In the years ahead I called it “The Pinup Wars”. But that is another story. Suffice it to say it was a complicated one with many moving parts, people, all fighting over hundreds of millions profits and IP in the late 90s and early 2000s. I again emerged in 2001 with satisfactory Federal Court protection orders , and owners rights on a valued pinup art brand. With it over 100 vintage image rights.
Indeed once again these travails over this pinup war became my inspiration to create more art! This time both creative writing, and illustration art! Creating vintage styled Detective Series of film noir stories. My “pulp styled” Fictions are based on factual events, both current and historic. I spiced with my fiction, and weaving my decades of deep diving research going back into a 80 year history of the glamour arts business.
I am also illustrating all the covers, and inside gatefold art for these “juicy”, sometimes spicy fast read novellas.
As thrillers, they are written as a true noir serial. The world of 20th century pinup art often interconnected to historic auto, and aviation industries, as well as a more nefarious, and historic characters of history. This was a salty, and sorted truth of the American pinup art history. It was a multimillion dollar business, mixing national advertising, the movie industry, and popular culture iconology. It was a big business worthy of fighting for. Even sometimes dying for!
But as they say, that is another story, for another day. You can read about it soon in my series.
Daniel Vancas -Artist and creative storyteller
"Last Flight" (c) by Daniel Vancas, 1993-95, Pan Am Clipper from San Francisco to New Zealand, leaves Honolulu, Dec. 7th 1941, just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Then flies to Australia and around the world unscheduled to avoid capture or destruction.
(c)Detective Dan Series, created by Daniel Vancas,1997, 2016-2026 all rights res.
Note: All art, story and writing is uniquely by Daniel Vancas. NO a.i., was used in any part. All errors, omissions, and mistakes are also uniquely my own. Thank you for overlooking my flawed humanity and limited abilities.
Artworks by Daniel Vancas now available as hand signed fine art prints on canvas and paper.
