Archive for the ‘Horse Racing Scenes’ Category

Essex in Mayfair

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Essex Art Club’s London exhibition at Gallery 54, Shepherds Market, Mayfair, is now on, the show continues until Sunday 20th. It’s a lovely little gallery and a nice selected show, with works from the Cardews, John Tookey and Derek Chambers amongst others. Opening times are 11am to 7pm, except Sunday when show closes at 4pm.

My contribution includes this small painting of a point to point at Horseheath.

Painting of Point to Point

Horseheath Point to Point

Essex Art Club is a small club but with a very fine tradition, the current president is Prof Ken Howard RA. Past presidents have included Sir Alfred Munnings PRA and lots of other RA’s. Visit their website here for more details about the art club.

Posted in Horse Racing Scenes

High Easter Point to Point

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

This small painting is called “Ready for Home”, it depicts packing up at the end of a day’s point-to-point race at High Easter, near Chelmsford in Essex.

Watercolour of High Easter with horse box

Ready for Home

I liked the blue and white striped horse box, and the blue on the jockey’s jacket and the leg wrappings… Didn’t realise until the horse box left without the horse that it wasn’t actually that horse and jockey’s truck! (She was actually in blue and yellow stripes, but I’ve adapted that slightly for the pic)

Posted in Horse Racing Scenes

Work In Progress

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Well this one is in progress and it’s probably also going to be the title of the piece:

Painting of painting

Work In Progress

I wanted to try out a sort of trompe l’oeil effect with obviously painted bit of horse racing painting, and aim at more realistic effect for the surrounding backing board, hand and brush. Soon discovered that trying to paint the hand you’re actually painting with is a seriously annoying bit of ‘life drawing’ to attempt.

Perversely the part I really like about this painting is the way the deckle edges on the ‘paper’ work. My hand and arm don’t look too bad at this scale but definitely need some more work… I was getting depressed making decisions about how many wrinkles to include, which is main reason this one has been back in the pending drawer for a while!

UPDATE:  The painting did finally get ‘finished’ and can be viewed here it was selected for the Society of Equestrian Artists’ 2010 “Horse in Art” exhibition, the title eventually chosen for it is “Finishing the Race”

Posted in Horse Racing Scenes, Work in Progress

Race to the Line

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Another one I prepared earlier… apologies will catch up with more recent stuff soon.

Watercolour Horse Racing Painting

"Race to the Line" watercolour by Katy Sodeau

This painting is available from Lindsell Art Gallery.

I’ve always preferred horse racing as a subject both in my paintings and in other peoples. The thing that actually started me painting seriously was seeing a beautiful watercolour painting in the window of the then “Equus” gallery in Newmarket. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford it but having some limited experience of using watercolours in architectural work thought “It looks so simple I’m sure I could do that”…

Having now acquired more knowledge of painting styles and prices, I think the work I saw was actually a Skeaping print. Anyway, I quickly discovered that the simplest looking things were the hardest to emulate, and have spent the last twenty years working at it!

Posted in Horse Racing Scenes