Dayton Concours Artist Statement
Dayton Concours
Lory Lockwood
Artist StatementMy paintings are about reflections and typically the way I work is to select two vehicles that reflect each other and then create a piece based on the abstract qualities within the reflections. However, the commission painting challenges for the 2010 Dayton Concours d'Elegance pushed me into a much more complicated situation.
The setting was to be in Carillon Park, Dayton, Ohio and I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. As I had attended the 2009 Concours, I was familiar with the park but had no photo references. Skip Peterson sent me many photos of the grounds. I choose to use the education center, thinking that the grassy area would be the perfect setting for the cars. Unfortunately, in the photos there were no leaves on the trees but we determined it was a sycamore, and there is a sycamore near my New Orleans studio, problem solved.
The Concours committee picked the cars of Walter P. Chrysler and Alfa Romeo to be featured in the Concours. I love to paint chrome reflections and hood ornaments and I have a library of my collected photographs from past events. I found the perfect shot of a 1932 Chrysler Imperial with the leaping gazelle - all in beautifully colored chrome. And I took artistic license and painted two reflections of the Carillon on the chrome around the grille.
The Alfa Romeo was more challenging. After much research and discussion, I presented three choices and the committee picked the 1938 8C 2900B MM Spdyer. It is beautiful car but for many reasons a very difficult and complicated choice. There were only five models ever built for the Mille Miglia car race in Italy in '38, and only four were ever used. Through my friend and motorhead, Mike Hemesley, I was able to obtain many books and information about these Alfas.
As the four cars have been altered and restored many times and each in different ways since the 1938 race, I decided to depict in my painting, a version of the Spyder that was as close to the originals as possible. This choice required that I find pictures of all four cars, read about the race and also investigate what changes were made to the cars as they changed owners the last 80 years. The good news is that all four are preserved in prominent museums or collections and there is information available. The challenging news is that they are all now all different from each other and also from the original model.
Red was the original color of all models and this hue fit with my idea for the painting. The first models all had whole windshields where that has now been changed to a double in some. There was a bar across the grille in the beginning and this has been changed to no grille or one with a script. There was also a chrome bar down the center of the '38's and this has been eliminated in some of the restorations. The first headlights were white with a pattern where some are now red. And none of these cars have ever been photographed in Carillon Park - its surroundings reflected in the headlights, the clubhouse viewed through the windshield, its red hue reflected in the nearby Imperial - all under the shade of the lovely sycamore trees!
This project was a very interesting one for me. As a painting, it required almost as much research and reading as it did painting. Matter of fact - the painting was the easy part! I also have always felt very strongly that an artists' job is not just to make a painting, but to understand what the painting is about and be able to clearly communicate this intent to the viewers. I hope for the Dayton Councours that I have accomplished my goal.