"30 Missions" - Exhibition

Paintings by Roger Kirby,  10 - 30 May 2011

Artist’s Tribute to Father’s Wartime Experience  

British artist Roger Kirby, who has lived and worked in the USA since 1993, will exhibit "30 Missions" during May at Lytham Heritage Centre as a tribute to his late father Rip Kirby and the wartime crews of Bomber Command.

Local businessman Rip Kirby, the founder of Lytham St Annes-based international energy consultancy Inenco Group, was also an RAF Bomber Command veteran from WW2, when a tour of duty comprised 30 missions. Between June 2 and August 10, 1944, RAF Navigator Rip did just that in a Lancaster bomber. Over 60 years later, after his death, his wife Audrey found his faded RAF navigator’s logbook in the attic, which detailed his 30 missions over Germany and German-occupied France.

This emotional discovery gave her son Roger the inspiration to visit all 30 of the target areas recorded in his father’s log. At each location he completed a painting, not only as a tribute to his father’s war service, but also as a reminder of the reality of war and its aftermath. 

The paintings are all 1 metre square, each being an evocative and haunting record of the experience, creating a thought-provoking exhibition when seen together. 

 On the ’30 Missions’ website, Roger says his father talked to him just the once about his wartime experiences. He spoke about confronting the horrible deaths of fellow crew and knowing the awful reality that children, mothers and old people were the victims of his actions. 

A critique of this family picture painted in Stuttgart says: “The mother and children in Stuttgart confront the viewer and serve to remind us that war is brutal for families, regardless of their loyalties. A weary mother holds a sturdy little boy, a worried little girl at her knee. It is likely that both children will grow up believing that bombing is a part of life.” 

’30 Missions’ has been exhibited in the USA, Scotland and Norwich, and shown from 11 – 30th May at Lytham Heritage Centre, which is dedicated to Rip Kirby – this is a very special event for Roger and his mother.  

Roger Kirby with daughter Molly and mother Audrey