The Romance of Flight, Captured on Canvas

New York artist Mimi Stuart said she strives for accuracy in her work, too, even though her style is relatively abstract. Her painting of a P-40 Warhawk, "Dauntless: Lope's Hope," is an explosion of orange and yellow, the canvas burnished with copper, silver and 24-karat gold.

Mimi also does sports paintings and celebrity portraits, including a recent one of Peter Frampton. ("He's such a sweetheart," she said.)

Keith Ferris is the dean of aviation painting. There are two of his huge murals at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. He helped found the aviation artists society 21 years ago, having noticed that there were an awful lot of airplane buffs who didn't know much about art and an awful lot of artists who didn't know much about airplanes.

"The idea was to bring everybody together," he said. Two of his paintings are in the exhibit, including a C-141 cargo jet on the ice in Antarctica, surrounded by penguins. Keith likes to say that he doesn't paint airplanes, he paints flight.

Tumblers of wine in hand, the artists surveyed the paintings, admiring the way they'd captured how light shines through fabric and clouds look before a storm and contrails stitch their way across an endless blue sky.

What is it about flight that inspires us, the artist and the viewer alike?

"It's symbolic of the freedom to leave the earth and soar and to go beyond where you've been," said Mimi.

And with that I went to see if I could find my car in the airport parking garage, that most earthbound of structures.