NASCAR's Race Week 2025

 THIS PAST WEEKEND, ON FRIDAY AND Saturday, Lynanne and I were invited to NASCAR's Race Week 2025 at Richmond International Raceway. On Friday, I did a live painting of Dale Earnhardt's car, and Saturday we went to the race. I'd never been to a NASCAR race before and it was intense. 

Throwback...Monday?

REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE USED TO POST 'throwback Thursday' where they showed images of how they looked years ago, or what they were doing years ago, etc.? Well, this is a serious throwback to the artist I was. I honestly don't remember how old I was, but I'm thinking 8 or 9. My father and I used to go into a gun store in Augusta over near the airport (I think it was on Wrightsboro Road, but I could be mistaken) and alongside guns, they also sold prints of deer or other animals. There was one of some deer in a field and the price tag was well over $1000 and I thought it was crazy someone would charge that amount. Better yet...that someone would pay that amount.

My father wasn't the best motivator and would make comments like, "well you're not that good," or "you have a ways to go and you probably won't be able to sell it for that amount until after you're dead." The latter comment is something I often heard from guidance counselors, friends, family members and the like. 

Imagine if I would've listened to them... 

12 Seconds

 12 Seconds

Oil on Canvas

24x30

3rd Place

12 SECONDS IS THE AVERAGE PIT stop at a NASCAR race. This includes changing all four tires, refueling, maintenance, etc., and it is absolute perfection to watch. The car pulls up, you breathe in, breathe out...breathe in, breathe out...and the car is on its way. Two breaths...that's all. 

In partnership with NASCAR, Crossroads Art Center in Richmond, VA sponsored a national art show about speed. While most of the artists focused on the speed of the cars (and they are certainly worth it) and others focused on some of the drivers, I watched multiple races and realized that the driver, no matter how good he or she is, is at the mercy of an expert pit crew. My aim in this painting was to focus on the speed of the crew, the blur, the motion, and the abstractness of their movements, the car in high detail. The car is usually zooming...rushing...in full on blur...but in this moment, it's the one thing on the track that is motionless as a small crew of focused individuals, in two breaths...12 seconds, keep the race going.

This painting will be on display, and for sale, at the Richmond International Raceway during Race Week, August 15-16. I will also be live painting on the 15th. 

The Met...

 I TOOK MORE PHOTOS AT THE Met than I probably should've. I'll just say, art in recent years is complete trash in comparison to art from the past. The sculpting game, the painting game...what I see being passed off as the finest of art at museums is shameful. Take a look at the last photo above; see the messiness? Now look at the photo above it. Sargent was an absolute master at his craft. Take a look at the wild and messy brush strokes of the little girl's dress...and then at the woman and her child...pure brilliance. Now look at the work by Ellsworth Kelly below. When people say, "I could've done that," and a smug director says, "but you didn't," um...yes, we did. We all did. We did that in the third grade. You know what we were told? We were told that we needed to get better and improve. Some artists never did and they're the ones who made it into the Met, or the VMFA. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral

 

New York's Public Art

SOME PHOTOS OF SOME OF THE public art in New York. I wish I could post all of them. 

Our Recent Trip to New York

LYNANNE AND I RECENTLY WENT TO New York City for about a week to kind of get away before our busy season starts. Things begin to pick up when the students come back in the fall and the beginning of August really kicks off the rest of my year. We watched the fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge, went to a jazz show, saw a sewer rat in the subway, went to a play on Broadway, took a boat ride past the Statue of Liberty, walked on the Little Island, and watched the sun set from the top of Rockefeller Building.