Horse Racing

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Neck & Neck - Gordon Coldwell
After Morning Training - Gordon Coldwell

Neck & Neck

After  Morning Training

Before the Start of the Race - Gordon Coldwell
Grand National - Gordon Coldwell

Before the Start of the Race

'Before the Start of the Race' shows a group of 'Riders & Runners' gathered and moving slowly, getting settled before the call to 'line up' for the off. The horses and jockeys are seen from a distance on a damp and drizzly morning on a northern England - the horses sweating and exhaling, the jockeys stooped and tense. 

The scene merges, blurs and loses definition In visual language terms, albeit that this digital painting it is representational, it is much abstracted. 

Multiple layers and multiple filters were used to arrive at a composition which, on close observation, is made up of curved, amoeba-like shapes and slightly muted colouring. It is only when viewed as a whole that the subject becomes clearer.

Grand National

The Grand National is a National Hunt horse race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England. First run in 1839, it is a handicap steeplechase over 4 miles 514 yards with horses jumping 30 fences over two laps. It is the most valuable jump race in Europe, with a prize fund in excess of £1 million. Wikipedia

My artwork aims to capture the movement, speed, (implied) thunderous clatter, tension and intensity of being 'in' (perhaps as a fallen jockey) or close to the race. A national institution and a race renowned for the high number of starting horses (30 or more) and the high number of fallers and injuries e.g. in 1967, the absolute outsider, Foinavon, won the race following a 'mass' fall at an early fence.

In visual language terms, albeit that this digital painting is representational, it is much abstracted. Multiple layers and multiple filters were used to arrive at a composition which on close observation is made up with swirling and merging marks, shapes and visual texture. It is only when viewed as a whole that the subject becomes clearer - in its overlaying and use of repetitive motifs it references some of the works by the Italian Futurists.

Prix de l'arc de Triomphe - Grdon Coldwell
Horse Race - Gordon Coldwell

Prix de l'arc de Triomphe

Racing Horses

I lived in West Sussex between 1979 and 1987. 'Racing Horses' is about the memory of watching racehorses being trained on the Sussex (UK) Downs. Memory, by its nature, loses definition, particularly when they are visual memories. Albeit that the work is representational when reading it as a whole, both in its detail and its realisation, the marks, distorted shapes and outlines it is a work of abstraction. The apparently primitive looking horses and indistinct riders appear to move as though in some dancing flight.

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