"The thing is with inspiration, is that you never get any warning before it hits you…”
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.
Celebrating F1's GOAT...
GOAT #1, a tribute to Michael. The greatest F1 driver of all time... is a very subjective and even emotive thing. With it being impossible to compare drivers in different cars let alone different eras, at best, it could be a series of generational GOAT’s. So here is my opening gambit, until very recently the most dominant and decorated driver of all time, a 7 time world champion with 5 of those back to back for Ferrari... Michael Schumacher.
A master of finding speed over 1 lap and in the wet, and setting new benchmarks for professionalism and fitness. A savagely focused competitor and winning machine, and like all who could be described as such, occasionally the subject of controversy. Universally admired, respected, feared. A racing icon tragically injured through leisure pursuit, unbelievable given the level of jeopardy experienced and mostly sidestepped throughout his illustrious career. This point hitting hard with me personally, my athletically talented brother suffering a severe brain injury three decades ago in what should have been an innocuous accident, resulting in a lifetime of care. Sometimes a dose of humour is the only way to cope...
My life-size 700lb bronze effigy to celebrate Michael Schumacher was unveiled at Arte Veloce, my Italian automotive themed show with Concours Club for Art Basel Miami. As with all of my sculpture work, it was a 20 month project based on reality for the ultimate detail; a 3D scan of Michaels 2002 race suit, one renowned victory celebration, and one four legged friend that I’m really struggling to think of a name for, other than Billy. We previously trained and 3D captured a rearing stunt horse, and later installed the rig on a farm to re-create Lamborghini’s bull.... but neither could prepare for the mayhem of six goats in a pen and 160 cameras. Pandemonium, and not everything survived.
#KeepFighting
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%.