Discovery Shuttle Return to Flight. 32” x 40”.
Watercolor and drybrush. Collection NASA, NASA
Headquarters. Image courtesy the artist.
the end, Prey chose to depict Columbia in an
upbeat way. “I decided to do something really
positive,” Prey says. “I spent a lot of time
thinking about what I would paint, and soon I
realized it wasn’t just a painting. It was about
the people.” The painting itself gives off a
radiant aura: the shuttle lifts triumphantly from
the launch platform, pointing straight and true.
Even the painting’s colors convey optimism.
The vibrant blue of the sky, the red-orange of
the shuttle’s main booster rocket, and the white
of the exhaust together evoke the red, white,
and blue of the American flag. You can almost
hear Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
SciArt in America June 2014
Her third painting for NASA, of the Space
Shuttle Discovery, was, in Prey’s words, not
as “emotionally fraught.” But in her work,
Prey acknowledges that while the Discovery
mission—the first shuttle mission since
the Columbia tragedy—went smoothly, the
atmosphere surrounding it was bittersweet.
The image she created shows a small Discovery
set against an immense sky and billowing
exhaust clouds, while below spreads a distorted,
shimmering reflection in a Florida lagoon. In
a sense, the painting depicts the rise of the
shuttle program from disaster, the clear shuttle
emerging from confusion and pain.
15