Tags:
Journalism of Courage
There was something of a stern class-monitor look about him on the cricket field. But in his winter off from international rigours,Michael Vaughan went about banging balls dipped in paint on the walls of an empty warehouse. And left a huge impression.
The player whose name is already etched in English cricket folklore for captaining the team to a historic Ashes win in the summer of 2005,calls his work Artballing.
We have an idea of what we want to produce before we start. So if Im recreating a hundred,we have worked out how many singles,twos or fours I had hit and then I hit the ball recalling the type of shots from the innings, Vaughan explains in an email interview to The Sunday Express.
How it began
The idea first came to him and his graphic designer friend Guy Brown as they sat over drinks one afternoon last December,and Brown brought up Martina Navratilovas tennising concept of painting. They thought of adopting something similar in cricket,but not limiting it to the sport either. Three weeks later,the first pieces were ready.
Some of the pieces are created very quickly,by just a single shot or throw, Vaughan says,others take a lot longer and some are spread over a number of days.
What is similar is that each of the paintings has a story behind it. Not surprisingly,the Ashes moments figure often. There is a painting of the urn in Australias green and yellow from Vaughans 2002/03 series,in which he scored 633 runs to climb to the top of the world rankings. Then there is the one of a giddily happy player titled Monday 12th September 2005,the day the 2005 series was won.
Among those of his innings,one is called Melbourne 145,another Old Trafford 166. Most of those came with simple,on-impulse colour-scheme and design,but the technique has been now developed over the months,with stencilling and templates. Caribbean Colours,for instance,uses a number of templates to build up the various colours. Its very much a one-off,most of the works use simple templates or none at all, Vaughan says.
And the precision that marked Vaughans 18 Test centuries is put into good use here. Mike is such a fine batsman that he can hit the ball where he wants to, says Brown.
First show
There have been only two instances where they had to restart after a mishap,only because Vaughan hit the ball too hard and the canvas tore.
Ive been interested in contemporary art for a while now, Vaughan,who collects modern art,says. That bug was born through trips with former team mate Ashley Giles,who is something of an art connoisseur,to London galleries. One of those very stopovers,the Smithfield Gallery,will host a week-long exhibition of Vaughans work starting May 2.
The company has plans of moving into other sports and involve other sportspersons,and theyre starting with football. Artballing Football will launch in the autumn, Brown says. For the moment,though,it is the big cricket carnival that will come to the country soon that is making use of Vaughans other talent. The MCC has asked him to work on the advertising for the Twenty20 World Championship to be held in the country in June.
