BAP•
Browning Automatic Pistol
29.5 x 19.5 inches, oil on canvas, 2006
This was the first weapon I painted. More
normally known as a BAP. When it was first shown to me the gunnery officer
said: “don’t believe what you see in the movies. You’d be lucky to hit a barn
door at thirty paces with one of these. All that stuff about people aiming…that
doesn’t really work. You have to be point blank”.
In your hand it’s like a solid block of
metal. Very dense. Its not often these days you come across something that
feels like a black hole.
This particular weapon was bought by the
Irish army just after the Second World War, probably as surplus the US no
longer needed. They were decommissioned soon after I finished the painting –
See USP handgun.