Destination Moon begins not with science, but with waiting and waiting for the countdown to finish. Waiting for permission to imagine. As a child in the mid-1970s, I remember watching the last of the moon landings on a small black-and-white television, the image grainy and flickering, the sound slightly out of sync. Even then, the sense of occasion was unmistakable. Adults fell quiet. The room seemed to lean forward. Something important was happening somewhere else, far beyond the walls of the house.
By 1981, everything had changed. The world stopped again, but this time we watched in colour as the space shuttle lifted off. The flames were no longer abstract white noise, but incandescent oranges and reds. The sky was blue, impossibly blue. Liftoff felt ceremonial, almost religious. The countdown lasted forever, stretching time itself, and then suddenly it was gone, replaced by awe. That moment lodged itself deep in the imagination. Space travel was not just science; it was spectacle, promise, and belief.
Destination Moon is built from these memories, from that childhood conviction that the future was open-ended. That you could grow up and be anything you wanted to be. Who did not want to be an astronaut? Astronauts were calm and brave, sealed inside technology, travelling beyond the ordinary limits of life. They were proof that humans could escape gravity, routine, and even Earth itself.
At the centre of the painting stands a tin toy rocket: the Yonezawa XM-12 Moon Rocket. Built in Japan in 1956, it was the most desirable battery-operated rocket of its time. It embodies optimism in pressed metal and enamel paint. This is not a weapon, despite its form, but a promise. Its fins are clean, its decals playful, its surface worn just enough to suggest handling, love, and repetition. Toys like this were training devices for the imagination. They taught children how to project themselves into the future, how to rehearse futures that had not yet arrived.
The rocket is placed on a suburban street at dusk, a deliberate collision of the extraordinary and the ordinary. A quiet house glows from within. The grass is neatly trimmed. The sky transitions from day to night, holding both the moon and the first stars. This is not Cape Canaveral. It is everywhere and nowhere. It is where imagination takes off.
Colour is central here. The deep blues of the rocket and sky contrast with the warm domestic yellows of the house window. Red light pools beneath the rocket, theatrical and hopeful, as if liftoff is imminent. These colours are emotional signals as much as visual ones, mapping excitement, comfort, and anticipation.
Destination Moon is not about reaching the moon. It is about believing that you might. It is about the long countdowns of childhood, the way time once stretched, and the certainty that something extraordinary was about to happen. The rocket may never leave the ground, but the idea already has.
Destination Moon, Oil on linen, H 125cm W 95cm
