"Sprint Finish"

9 x 9"

Oil on board
(SOLD)

I decided to stay with the cycling theme for my latest painting. I went for something more ambitious this time and ended up doing a solid painting session of about 10 or 11 hours! (with a couple of short meal breaks in between of course). I'm pretty pleased with the end result and I hope you'll agree it was time well spent.

The painting is inspired by one of the stages of the 2003 Tour de France, the year when le Tour celebrated its 100th birthday. A group of riders come round the final bend and sprint for the finish line as the crowd cheers them on. The eventual winner was Alessandro Petacchi (pictured 2nd from the left), who won four stages in total that year.

One of the great things about paintings like this is that you don't really have to think too much about colour harmony. The colour is the harmony. Normally I'd be restricting my palette and trying to use as few tubes of paint as possible, but when it comes to painting a bike race there's the opportunity to throw all that out the window. Scenes like this are all about colour and vitality, energy and movement. It's very enjoyable to have the freedom to use so much colour and to lay it down almost wherever you want without having to worry about whether it looks right with what's around it.