A Day at the Races - 2006 acrylic on wood 38 x 76 inches
A Day at the Races
Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum
Clarence Street, Cheltenham GL50 3JT tel 01242 237431
11 March - 8 April 2006
to be opened by Edward Gillespie, managing director of Cheltenham Racecourse, Friday 10 March
The Bet acrylic on wood 28 x 28 inches 2006 collection Neil Birch
MARQUEE acrylic on canvas and painted wooden frrame 31 x 39 inches 2006
THE BOOKIE, THE OWNER, THE JOCKEY AND THE PUNTER acrylic on canvas 70 x 70 inches, 2006
Grandstand 2006, acrylic on wood 38 x 68 inches
The Outsider - 1995 oil on canvas 46 x 70 inches - collection Ken and Nancy Simmonds
14th March - 1996 acrylic on canvas 44 x 44 inches (work in progress)
THE SMELL OF THE HORSE THE ROAR OF THE CROWD 2006 acrylic on canvas on corrugated wood support 18 x 36 inches
The Jockeys Changing Room 1990 acrylic on canvas 34 x 40 inches
collection Cheltenham Racecourse
The Stewards Enquiry 1990 acrylic on canvas 34 x 40 inches
collection Cheltenham Racecourse
cataloguue introduction by Victor Chandler
The wide range of P J Crook's work encompasses a diversity of subjects. This exhibition, which opens to coincide with Cheltenham's famous Gold Cup festival, brings together a group of her paintings that have been part of a gambling theme threading it's way through her work inspired both by her late father's passion and the proximity of Cheltenham Racecourse to her home and studio.
Edward Gillespie, Managing Director at Prestbury Park has been very supportive and helpful in his encouragement. In 1989 he had the inspired idea of commissioning her to make two paintings for the Cheltenham boardroom which were evocations of a Stewards Enquiry and the Jockeys Changing Room. With them we have the clue to why Crook's 'racing' paintings are so successful. Her subject here and the driving force of her creative life is people, their relationships with one another and their surroundings. So these paintings are not obviously 'sporting art', rather they speak of the human condition as expressed in the heightened atmosphere of a racecourse.
In several of the paintings a race is watched by an intense cheering crowd all desperately willing 'their' horse to win. The punters, for whom the sport is a recreation, seem more animated than the jockeys for whom it is a profession; horses and riders have a different kind of concentration and discipline.
Newspapers devote much space to speculation about the Festival and help fuel the excitement before anyone reaches the course. Since the late 1980's PJ has regularly made paintings which feature the newspapers for a given day. These she sees as history paintings. Picture editors of newspapers seem to like these paintings as I was photographed underneath one in my office for The Independent. Because of the often random choice of date they can juxtapose unlikely stories. The shapes of the papers remind her Paris dealer Alain Blondel of the wings of birds or angels.
The abstract and formal qualities of the composition are of the utmost importance in all PJ's paintings. Heads and figures are sketched directly onto the canvas with thin paint, then rearranged and manipulated until a rhythm emerges and with it the characters of her players. As the canvas is progressively worked over, like a method actor she begins to feel the different emotions of the people she is creating and like a good director, brings out their essential nature. She will often rework a figure for weeks until it comes to life.
The rhythm, so evident in the newspaper works can also be found in the racing horses where the silks give even more scope for abstract invention. There is a rightness about these compositions that belies the layers of paint and experimentation under the surface. Whilst the finished paintings look as if they must have been well planned in advance, the fact is that everything has been worked out on the canvas we see in front of us and is the culmination of an intense struggle.
PJ's father was a passionate gambler who spent his life studying form and working on a betting system that he believed would be infallible - given enough time and money. Whilst not herself a gambler she recognises that every painting is a gamble in that she never knows if she can make it work. This provides a level of tension and excitement within the work that translates so well into the atmosphere of the Racecourse.