Art is winning the race to depict cars and car races, not just with old cars. Forget your camera digital or otherwise, nothing can beat still-life art for catching the speed, the passion, the action and the detail.
"Original paintings and commissions of old cars are increasing thanks to growing interest in the retro look and retro styling," says David Purvis, chairman of the Guild of Motoring Artists in Britain. Rising ownership of classic cars as well as more exciting racing than FI, provided by events such as Goodwood, are stimulating the demand for car art, he says.
Irish interest in car art is increasing too and, interestingly, paintings of modern cars are also starting to get more popular. Jim Cullen is a prime example of a motoring artist, one of a select band here much in demand these days. There's a queue of people waiting commissioned car paintings by him.
Cullen spent his entire career as an engineer with the ESB, no doubt acquiring a good eye for line and mechanical detail. In his spare time he was always painting, so when he retired in 1988 he started his second career as a car artist. A spare bedroom at his house in Terenure, Dublin, has been turned into a studio.
He uses mostly acrylic - it's very good for painting technical detail and dries quickly. He paints mostly on mounting board, either blue or grey, so that he doesn't have to worry about the sky.
"I tend to play down the background in paintings of cars, while other artists highlight it," says Cullen. Normally, he charges €400 for a painting of a car and it usually takes about 18 hours to complete. One of his paintings hangs in the RIAC restaurant in Dawson Street, Dublin - it was commissioned for the Wolseley Car Club of Ireland's commemorative rally in 2001.
Jim Cullen has painted all sorts of old cars, going back as far as a 1901 De Dion Bouton, often for members of the Irish Veteran & Vintage Car Club. He has done a commemorative painting of the annual Gordon Bennett rally every year since 1974. Last year, the big centenary year, his painting was sold at the banquet for €7,000.
People are also ordering paintings of their new cars, among them the owner of a new Mercedes and a proud Ferrari owner.
Another car artist, Debra Wenlock, whose studio is in Groomsport, Co Down, has been painting cars for 17 years.
Her most recent collection of the Irish Grand Prix were watercolours, acrylics and mixed media - watercolour, gouache, charcoal. She plans to do more oils in the future.
For Wenlock, the reference material is photographs - and she goes to motoring events to soak up the atmosphere. She's just back from See Red at Donington Park in Britain.
"In my paintings, I'm mainly seeking to recapture races from the past, from a time before video and usually colour photography," says Wenlock. Her paintings generally cost from €550 to €950.
Soon, she's to do a painting of a Fiat Balilla owned by Simon Thomas, a motor racing enthusiast and collector in Comber, Co Down. This car raced in the Tourist Trophy on the Ards Circuit, at Limerick and the Phoenix Park in 1935 and 1936. "Yes," says Thomas, "this will be expensive, but what isn't these days."
Wenlock is a member of the Ulster Vintage Car Club. "We own a 1930 Austin 7, a 1936 Fiat Topolino and a 1962 Wolseley 1500." She is the only member in Ireland of the Guild of Motoring Artists in Britain. Another member, who lives in England but does work in Ireland, is John Ketchell. He has painted a limited edition print of the 1931 Irish International Grand Prix in the Phoenix Park, for Motorsport Ireland, to commemorate the race's 75th anniversary - the painting took about two weeks and it's in a semi-abstract style, conveying the impression of speed admirably. A total of 300 prints of it are for sale, at €275 each plus €10 postage and packaging - or €325 for a framed version, including postage and packaging. For Motorsport Ireland, this is a different way of raising funds for the Park.
Ketchell's original pieces, done mainly in acrylic, cost anything from £500 to £5,000. He allows that there are good digital images of cars, "but generally speaking, they leave me cold - I don't find that I'm competing with them in any way."
David Purvis of the Guild of Motoring Artists says that collectable works take many forms, from Art Deco Lalique glass radiator mascots to £8 million Bugatti Royale cars, works of art in themselves, right through to the Monaco Geo Ham posters done in the 1930s. Early paintings of the first Monaco Grand Prix races are now so rare that they can go for as much as €10,000. Century-old posters for Michelin tyres, depicting Bibendum, are now considered art classics.
Then there are sponsored works, such as those done for the Shell Collection. The oil company commissioned many paintings of Irish scenes, among them a marvellous painting of the River Liffey in Dublin, done by Eve Kirk in 1939. What's left of the collection is now in Britain's National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in Hampshire.
In 1964, the Pirelli tyre firm produced the first of its famous calendars which are now seen as works of art by some collectors. A German collector got a record $30,000 for 29 calendars.
In Ireland, illustrations done in the 1950s and 1960s for Motoring Life magazine by the Ballance brothers are now highly collectable.
It seems that just as classic cars are as fashionable as modern day motors, in the digital age, there's life in the old easel yet.