"The thing is with inspiration, is that you never get any warning before it hits you…”
A career defining ten year commissioned project for McLaren, that I never even dreamt of let alone saw coming. A 10 year project to create life-size effigies of McLarens eight world driver champions to stand next to their cars on the iconic MTC Boulevard, founder Bruce watching over them like a proud father with his high achieving children…. is my concept. And I still struggle to compute the enormity of this today, seven years into the project. That something so permanent, that I have created for arguably the worlds greatest F1 museum, and revered by so many so close to the actual subjects of the sculpture, is unprecedented as it is ridiculous. ‘McLaren Monuments’ is a project driven by celebration, history, remembrance, story telling, by fans and for fans. I worked for a year of my own volition to create Senna ‘Eau Rouge’, simply because Ayrton was the reason I first grew to love F1 back in the mid to late 80s, as a British teen I was inherently a fan of McLaren and of Senna. ‘Eau Rouge’ was unveiled in early 2019, immediately went viral, and although McLaren were in the loop all through its creation, I never expected them to be the buyer, and to show the sculpture alongside Ayrton’s title winning cars on their famous boulevard. It may as well be the artwork that I introduce myself by ‘Ahhhh that was you!?’ I hear almost weekly, as every notable in every paddock knows of it. A few months later in May 2019, the indomitable Niki Lauda passed away, who besides his two world titles for Ferrari and later connection with Mercedes, was McLaren’s world drivers champion in 1984. I was immediately called in to their Monaco motorhome to discuss creating a bronze statue for him also… a 10 minute meeting with Zak Brown that escalated fast ‘Why don’t we do all the champions, and Bruce as well?’ Zak being one of the biggest fans of motorsport history I’ve ever met, we had most of the statue’s poses nailed down immediately too in that same 10 minutes. I distinctly remember Zak banging the table as he stood to leave ‘You can do this, right?” as I’m sat there shell shocked nodding yes, yet in reality having no place to be so sure. And here we are, 2/3rds of the way through the project, each and every sculpture created referencing raced assets from McLaren’s extensive archives, each one bringing new challenges to the fore, before the statues begin creating their own story that is out of my hands, after they’re installed at MTC Woking. Every time I see them again they’re in a new arrangement, for a new presentation or anniversary, for a new audience; they’re McLaren’s artworks now, not mine.
A continually updated collection of artwork from my journey around the world with Formula One. Through the last decade working with sponsors and most teams on the grid, showing at every circuit on the calendar and with British Embassies and art galleries in F1 cities - bringing all of those individual projects together in one place. My self styled role is to celebrate F1 as a whole, both current day and in re-creating the history of F1, so for that to have now come full circle being commissioned directly by McLaren, by Lewis as his parting gift for Mercedes, and to celebrate F1’s major milestone for them and to partner with F1 Arcade and F1 Hubs globally… is more than a bit ridiculous even from this side. I’m just a fan celebrating the sport as I see it. Over the last 20 years I’ve painted most of the sports icons - F1 continually creates its own story, I'm just here to celebrate it, the passion, the pain, the wins and the losses – the power of emotion that truly drives everything we do as humans. Original oil paintings tend to sell immediately but most have a limited edition created too. Listed here below are those artworks which have some availability remaining in one of the limited edition formats.
What is an embellished canvas edition?
I specialise in hand embellished canvas editions, a medium that I have constantly refined to reach this point and a technique that I’m pretty sure is unique to me. I can only paint originals so fast because I travel so much only 10-12 a year right now, but these canvas editions limited to 50 of each slot in perfectly as their own tier for collectors. I use the same tools as when creating the original oil painting, picking out and re-painting the details with really thick texture on top of a limited edition giclee canvas, so that every one is unique and it’s almost an original painting again. Indeed most viewers will assume it is an original painting… unless you sat the actual original next to it. By default these are created in two scales, one kinda 41”/110cm, and the other 23”/55cm (including a chunky black wooden frame) and cropped square like those in the header image here, to hang either individually, or arranged together. And yes, I do paint these canvas editions myself, I embellish several together when I first hit the studio in the day to wake my brain up creatively, like jogging to warm up for a sprint.
For original oil painting enquiries please ping me an email in case there may be one available on a gallery wall somewhere, otherwise commissioned new paintings are possible too, given time to create. I try to answer everything personally that I should do, which can mean a short delay when I’m working overseas with F1, but I still get to emails most days.
McLaren Boulevard Moments
A continually updated collection of artwork from my journey around the world with Formula One. Through the last decade working with sponsors and most teams on the grid, showing at every circuit on the calendar and with British Embassies and art galleries in F1 cities - bringing all of those individual projects together in one place. My self styled role is to celebrate F1 as a whole, both current day and in re-creating the history of F1, so for that to have now come full circle being commissioned directly by McLaren, by Lewis as his parting gift for Mercedes, and to celebrate F1’s major milestone for them and to partner with F1 Arcade and F1 Hubs globally… is more than a bit ridiculous even from this side. I’m just a fan celebrating the sport as I see it. Over the last 20 years I’ve painted most of the sports icons - F1 continually creates its own story, I'm just here to celebrate it, the passion, the pain, the wins and the losses – the power of emotion that truly drives everything we do as humans. Original oil paintings tend to sell immediately but most have a limited edition created too. Listed here below are those artworks which have some availability remaining in one of the limited edition formats. What is an embellished canvas edition? I specialise in hand embellished canvas editions, a medium that I have constantly refined to reach this point and a technique that I’m pretty sure is unique to me. I can only paint originals so fast because I travel so much only 10-12 a year right now, but these canvas editions limited to 50 of each slot in perfectly as their own tier for collectors. I use the same tools as when creating the original oil painting, picking out and re-painting the details with really thick texture on top of a limited edition giclee canvas, so that every one is unique and it’s almost an original painting again. Indeed most viewers will assume it is an original painting… unless you sat the actual original next to it. By default these are created in two scales, one kinda 41”/110cm, and the other 23”/55cm (including a chunky black wooden frame) and cropped square like those in the header image here, to hang either individually, or arranged together. And yes, I do paint these canvas editions myself, I embellish several together when I first hit the studio in the day to wake my brain up creatively, like jogging to warm up for a sprint. For original oil painting enquiries please ping me an email in case there may be one available on a gallery wall somewhere, otherwise commissioned new paintings are possible too, given time to create. I try to answer everything personally that I should do, which can mean a short delay when I’m working overseas with F1, but I still get to emails most days.
I've always thought in 3D, I guess my painting style is testament to that, but it's obvious to me far further back than that. My entire childhood spent playing (learning...) with Lego is where I attribute much of my foundation as an artist, and I still have a felt tip collage I won a prize for aged 5, which is multi layered. At school it was pottery and woodwork that I most revelled in, then at University studying aerospace engineering, again it was the practical side. And to be honest, right now, sculpture is where my mind spends most of its time. The challenges and the costs with sculpture are exponentially greater... but also the scope of possibilities and power of the result with a much greater physical presence, should I get it right. Everything I create sculpturally, I can see in my mind’s eye from the outset, I wait for that vivid 'Eureka moment' of realisation before embarking on anything, have to be totally clear what I'm working towards, then the 'only' challenge is to bring that vision to reality. Based on three-dimensional motion capture and using the rarest of assets for hyper realism and dynamic, and a new improved take on what is fundamentally a very traditional output – 3D capture and augmented-reality modelling translated into the age-old tradition of lost wax bronze casting. And where sculpture has led me to, in a relatively short space of time, is mind blowing. Creating sculpture just feels like a legacy that is so much more permanent than paint, created from near indestructible materials that will be around for much much longer than I will be, and celebrating subjects often so revered and indeed worshipped, often by those who are so close to them... is a difficult thing to get your head around, to be responsible for creating something of that magnitude. I may well have already created my most renowned work – indeed although I will never rest from furthering what I do, I think that's fairly likely actually. But then I never saw that career defining epiphany coming either, that led me to create Senna 'Eau Rouge'. Inadvertently at first, I appear to have carved my own niche and a renewed self-styled role to celebrate the history of F1, in life-size bronze. Each statue is around 12 months from concept to realisation, and is created in three limited edition scales: Life-size, 60% (F1 wind tunnel development scale) and 20%.