Billy Miles style futuristic, imaginative

Billy Miles has an expansive imagination, like the skies and galaxies he portrays in his artwork. He began at age 5, capturing means of travel by painting airplanes and cars. Today his pieces illustrate more far-fetched ways of transportation through space and the deep recesses of the mind, with bold blended color, futuristic ships and atmospheric displays.

“I like to take viewers to places they’ve never been before,” he said.

Miles, 53, is no stranger to the open skies; for 21 years, he piloted planes for the Air Force and then Southwest Airlines. Though his résumè mentions nothing of his artistic endeavors, art is something he has always done, even selling some of his work to friends and colleagues.

“The military was very structured, but there was always a different side of me, one that thought outside the box,” he said. “Doing art helped me deal with the stress. … I drew cartoons, and doing so made it tolerable.”

In 2004, Miles was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and he retired from flying, which enabled him to pursue his art and his imagination to soar. He said he is most productive between 3 and 9 a.m., often using both hands to work the paint.

In the basement of his Spokane Valley home is a studio filled with supplies and a large easel. The walls and floor are dark gray cement, giving the space a sort of futuristic “bunker” feel, and the paintings displayed on the walls look like portals to other worlds.

Miles is self-taught and works in acrylic paint and watercolor. His repertoire of style, and subject matter is wide-ranging, from impressionistic and abstract splashes of color to realistic ships, planes and skyscapes. A fan of science fiction, Miles creates other worlds, ethereal figures and spaceships.

His latest series of work that he dreamt up years ago called “The Plain of Inquisition” is close to completion. It is a dozen paintings that tell a story of an ancient civilization full of knowledge and the newer races that want to own that knowledge. Miles wrote a story that explains, “Unwilling to unconditionally surrender their knowledge to their pursuers, they, instead, crash one of their remaining knowledge repository ships into a rather obscure and remote planetoid … sowed with temporal mines … The intent was to challenge the new races to find a way or develop the technology to breach the mine field and enter the ‘cathedral’ of ultimate knowledge.”

Using 7-strand, 18-gauge nylon-covered stainless steel wire and lightweight metal electrical conduit, Miles built a support module on which the paintings will be displayed. A 10-pound down-rigging ball hangs below, just grazing the floor like a pendulum. The paintings that will be displayed on the suspended, futuristic-looking contraption illustrate another world of peaks, valleys and floating cubes.

The Plain of Inquisition, along with other works by Miles, will be displayed at Ink to Media, 523 N. Pines Road, for a month beginning Aug. 29. It will be Miles’ first exhibit, long in coming, but the artist is ready.

“There’s a whole big (art) world out there,” he said. “I’ve just opened the door.”