Tim Layzell's Motorsport pop‑art is the ultimate eye‑candy

“My grandfather was stationed at Goodwood during the war, in 1942”, says Layzell. “He was an airframe fitter on Spitfires. So watching the Spitfire and Hurricane displays is quite emotional.”

Tim Layzell, is one of the country’s most talented, if not THE most talented, automotive artists, and probably the youngest to have exhibited at a major motorsport event. Aged 13, he won the British Racing Drivers Club Young Motoring Artist Award; the prize was to exhibit at what was then the Coys Festival, and later the Silverstone Classic. “I won it, and that was that”, says Tim, modestly. Nowadays, he does private commissions, corporate paintings and sells prints of the many well-known motoring events he attends, such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Revival, as well as Pebble Beach and the Monaco Grand Prix.

“I started when I was 4, drawing ERAs, Bugattis. I went to Vintage Sportscar Club Meetings with my parents. I exhibited at FOS for the first time in 1997; a long time ago. I’ve been to every Festival of Speed; the first Festival was amazing; they were unearthing stuff you’d only seen in a book.

“When the Revival started, it blew our minds. It was amazing watching Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham… I couldn’t believe how fast they were racing in the wet.

“There were two or three Vanwalls, two or three BRMs, 250Fs, Coopers… it blew our minds that there were team presences.”

So does he just paint old cars in old races, or modern stuff too, I wonder? “I watched the Bathurst 12 Hour on live stream and there was a Ferrari 458 that won and I was buzzing from that for a few days, and then the winner emailed me and asked if I would paint the car. It was acrylic on canvas, 2.5m wide. That was pretty amazing.”

Layzell does private commissions, as well as corporate work; he recently painted the Jaguar F-Type coupe for the marque when the car was unveiled.

Does he only do very expensive, rare cars? “Some people scrimp and save to buy stuff and that’s nice to do paintings of”.

So how exactly does he transform real life to canvas? “I generally work from photos and sketch different compositions and angles.

“For pop-art style the car has to be big, but in my photo-realism stuff it’s the background that counts. I’m not a motoring artist per se: cars on tarmac are boring.

“So it’s either a bird’s eye view – like my Mille Miglia stuff, from above – or it’s a big landscape where you could take the car out and it would still be a painting anyway.

“My pop-art stuff is almost cartoony, but it’s not: I’ve got the angles in there. Some people will paint static cars, but painting the car in motion, drifting through a corner, getting the subtleties of the suspension, the wheels drifting, the different angles… You’ve got to show all that in the picture. That’s really important in the pop-art stuff. They’re very stressful to paint – it relies on disappearing perspectives, disappearing speed. It’s about using as few stripes as you can to show that. It is quite hard.

“If you want something to look fast, you use loads of streaks, blurred in motion. But you have to be selective; it’s a battle not to make it too complex. The limiting factor of that style is that you’re limited to front or rear shots really, but you’ll never get a photo like that, unless you travel with them.”

So that’s the cars, but what about the drivers? They way they move around in the car? They seem to be a big part of the pop-art paintings Layzell does in particular. Who are his favourites?

“Peter Collins, Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn, Jim Clark, James Hunt… that period of drivers”, he says. “I love those characters. Jenson Button is brilliant; him and Damon Hill are both examples of brilliant sportsmen, massively good ambassadors. Innes Ireland too, looked cool when he was driving.”

I love the way Layzell dips in and out of various periods, picking out faces, cars and races at random, his passion piqued by certain moments in time.

“My choice of subjects is based around cars I think are cool”, he tells me. “Cool colour schemes, for example. I like the American Sebring-type shots - their colour schemes are such fun. And 70s colour schemes are cool - the early Ferrari 512s and Porsche 917s in psychedelic colours.”

So does Layzell race? His knowledge of cars, and the way they move and perform on certain racing lines, is so precise, so detailed.

“You’ve got to have a knowledge of how cars handle. I did hillclimbing and karting, but I haven’t raced – all my exhibitions coincide with the motorsport season – I turn up everywhere in a Transit van. Although, there is no finer vehicle”, he says, small smile playing on his lips.

“I’ve got a TVR Camaro”, he tells me, and I raise my eyebrows. He’s sticking to his guns on the matter, however: “I’ve had seven TVRs – I’ve got a TVR problem. They’ve actually been pretty reliable, my TVRs. They’re so much more interesting than anything else once you’ve had one.”

I’m sure, I say, although I note he’s never painted any of his TVRs….

Images courtesy of Tim Layzell.