Summer

I am currently painting ‘The Winners of The Palace House Stakes’, a small race I know. However, I am painting it in recognition of the new Newmarket Heritage Centre planned for Palace House Stables. Fund raising is a mere £2 million off its target despite being awarded the Lottery Funding.

My winner’s paintings are a visual archive of real historical results. They require a huge amount of research to find the colours worn in years gone by, when records were less important and photographic images black white, if there were any. People are very kind and try to help me find them. On this occasion I would like to say a special thank you to Ian Nelson for his time and guidance, on how to read the racing books and use the Racing Room in the Library more successfully. Also thanks to Weatherbys, for finalising the last few stragglers from home and abroad.

The arrangement of the painting in progress is explained as follows:

• The boxes along the bottom containing a year e.g. 1961, represent the stalls at the beginning of a race.

• The orange stripes are resist tape and will be white to represent the fences along the course.

• The round red spots at the top on either side of the canvas represent the finishing posts.

• Start at the bottom left above 1961. This horse won The Palace House Stakes in 1961. The jockey above it won in 1962, above 1963, 1964, 1965.

• Then drop down to the next stall which says 1966; the jockey above it won in 1966 and so forth, until the top right hand corner, which was this year’s winner 2012.

• This makes a total of 52 winners to date.