COLORADO SPRINGS — There are Olympic athletes sharing talent beyond elite athletic ability. A select group of athletes who are also artists. ”I'm an Olympic athlete, but also an Olympic artist,: said 1984 and 1988, Great Britain Track & Field Team Member, Roald Bradstock, “Use to differentiate between the two, but now I see them as one." He is one of a half dozen athlete artists creating for the Olympian Artists in Residence program.
The art has been digitally transferred to a fabric textile recognized in Japanese culture. The art is draped and hanging in a display exhibited as part of the Tokyo Olympic experience. A preview of the exhibit can be seen here on-line.
Bradstock made a visit, with his original work, to the Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs. He is sometimes referred to as the Picasso of Olympic art. One of his pieces created for the Tokyo exhibit shows the formal Olympic rings in the midst of a seemingly chaotic frenzy of more rings. "Basically, attack the rings,” said Bradstock, “The symbolism of the pandemic and the struggles that the world, but also the movement have gone through." It is the artist's perspective on an Olympic year impacted by COVID-19.
Bradstock said art can convey a message about athletics when words are not enough. "Maybe something I can't explain, you can't quantify, something I just feel in my being." Elation, excitement, athleticism, uncertainty, determination, and more, there is along list of athlete thoughts and emotions, artists convey through lines, strokes, composition and color.
