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The Man Behind the Canvas - Paul Oz 129 Czech Mates - Praga Cars EVENTS
The Man Behind the Canvas
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Rob follows the whirlwind career of one of the UK’s career of one of the UK’s most exciting portrait artists most exciting portrait artists and sculptors, Paul Oz. and sculptors, Paul Oz.
Written by: Rob Ward Rob Ward
I would like to think we will all go through at least one life-affirming moment in our time. least one life-affirming moment in our time. An experience or outcome that makes us realise An experience or outcome that makes us realise we’re on the right track and have made the right we’re on the right track and have made the right decisions. Life has so many junctions, so many decisions, and it’s these affirming moments that guide us and give us the confidence that those decisions were the right ones. Time does fly, and it’s easy to keep your head down and forget to appreciate what progress you’ve made. Although Paul Oz’s career in art wasn’t necessarily formed from a life-affirming moment as such, the decision to transition from a software engineer, only painting at the weekends, to painting full time in 2010 was very much affirmed nine years later. We’ll get onto that later though. First, let’s go back to the beginning. Paul actually chose to base his future on a more conventional route of education in the form of an aerospace engineering degree. At 18 years old, Paul had dipped a toe in the waters of art, and even as a pre-teen, he had learned the skill of perspective, drawing trains coming out of tunnels, perfecting the appearance of them disappearing to a point in the distance. “Prior to that, I won a prize for a felt tip collage of parrots in trees aged 5, I guess that’s the earliest evidence. I still have that artwork. I think Lego has a lot to answer for too; I used to spend days inventing and building things, and couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the mornings and get back to building”, Paul remembers. In 2010, Paul took the plunge into painting full time, concentrating on the most visual impact possible, using thick swages of bright, neon, oil-based paint in huge scale, celebrating stars of stage, screen and pop iconography as well as producing gallery pieces reminiscent of an ‘80s child including Lego figures, the A-Team van, Rocky Balboa and Super Mario, “I’ve created 28 artworks over the last five years, covering everything I grew up with, played with, broke, idolised or was scared by”.
Inspiration from film comes in the form of C-3PO, the late Heath Ledger as The Joker and Clint Eastwood with many other memorable faces from nostalgic moments on screen, “I think it’s very important to be authentic. Yes, I do this to earn a living, but that needs to be in the right way and for the right reasons. This also means that I know what to paint and when, because I’m a fan of the subject matter anyway”. There’s a wonderful nod to Great Britain in Paul’s unique style as well as some phenomenal wildlife pieces that feel like they’re projecting two feet from the canvas, “On the whole, I just paint what I’m into and how I would want it on the wall. The subjects kind of choose themselves”.
The broad range of subject matter ensures there’s something for everyone, but there is one topic of inspiration that, I guess for all of us, would shine through the most, and that is Motorsport, “F1 drives itself now, if you’ll excuse the pun, and sometimes I have to force other work into the schedule for variety. My publisher is always pushing for non-F1 work to balance out gallery wall spaces, but does leave it up to me entirely as to what that is. “Now and again, I’ll come up with an idea for a whole show which will force me to do nothing else for several months, like the wildlife show in collaboration with Bristol Zoo, and the ’80s kid shows celebrating everything that was awesome about that decade of entertainment. There is a different level of satisfaction and drive in creating a whole collection around a theme than with individual paintings, and I enjoy the marketing side of things around shows like this too”.
A skill like Paul’s has got to be a rarity. I believe there’s something that artists have in their internal wiring that people like me, who aren’t artistic, simply don’t have. Paul, who clearly remains wonderfully humble, disagrees, “I don’t see painting especially as a talent. There’s no magic or mystique to it really, it’s more a process, trying to get the vision in my head out into paint”. It seems so simple to just draw what you see, but there is so much more to it in my view. To be able to project what is in the mind or in front of you and express it through your own style filter and chosen medium, and for it to launch off of the canvas like Paul’s work does, that is more than just lessons and practise I am sure. I think it is that part of the process that I would be missing, getting it out of my head and onto the page so to speak. That, I think, is the missing link here that separates incredible artists like Paul from myself. Paul works from several photos at one time to get as much information and as many angles on a subject as possible, helping to build the character of a subject. A laptop is used to zoom in and out and change any lighting to ensure features are not missed. This just shows how much information about the subject is being processed before it goes onto the canvas. This process of creation is so much more than just draw what you see, there’s a method of achieving the lifelike, 3D aspect of each piece and it needs something and someone very special to piece it all together. With the inspiration and such a detailed view of the subject sorted, setting the mood is next! “I absolutely never paint in silence, I find it impossible. It’s dance or trance anthems usually or new music channels, something energetic. I’m constantly thinking about colour, it’s the most important and most difficult thing, being able to see the real tone you need and not get confused with what is around it. I don’t have much headspace left to think outside of that really”.
What comes with all art is subjectivity. What us non-artists will often see is something incredible that we just couldn’t begin to create, however Paul is very critical of his work and the result we see doesn’t come easily, “It tends to go through stages. Early on, a painting can feel like you’ve nailed it, then it starts to go wrong and you fight to bring it back, and that’s not easy. I only use a pallet knife, no brushes, and very thick paint. I have to be conscious that sometimes deep texture can accentuate detail, but sometimes detract from it.
“Sometimes I do scrap a piece partway through to save wasting more time flogging it when it’s clearly not going to work, usually if I’ve got the composition wrong. There are occasional finished artworks that will never see the light of day because I’m really not happy with them, but that doesn’t happen often now. Years ago, it was common. Every day’s a school day, and I certainly don’t have my own work on the wall at home, I’d be constantly seeing things that could be better!“.
Since painting full time, Paul’s career has progressed at a rapid rate with commissions completed for a who’s who of sporting individuals, families and brands — Lewis Hamilton, James Hunt’s family, Jenson Button, Bruno Mars, Pirelli and Red Bull to name but a few — plus he regularly performs live painting for the likes of F1 teams, Team Sky, England Rugby and Chelsea FC. Furthermore, partnerships with galleries, charities, motorsport teams and British embassies around the world have resulted in Paul’s work being seen in every F1 paddock club worldwide, in Selfridges, Harrods, Goodwood Festival of Speed and even Playboy in London. If you’d been hiding under a rock and somehow hadn’t noticed Paul’s work by 2019, something magnificent was about to be unveiled that would no doubt have changed that. This was that lifeaffirming point I mentioned earlier for Paul, and the result was something I think every one of you will appreciate. To mark 25 years since the death of Ayrton Senna, Paul revealed a life-size bronze statue of Ayrton himself, portrayed in the dynamic position of steering through Eau Rouge into Raidillon at Spa. The statue took a whole year to create, the process of which pushed the boundaries of casting feasibility, but Paul had a vision and a concept that would later become the preface to any introduction, “It was careerdefining for sure, and the way most people introduce me now is by mentioning the Senna statue.
“I can definitely pin Senna down to one eureka moment late one night. I hardly slept at all, and by 9 am the following morning, I was sat on the foundry’s boardroom table in driving pose saying ‘we’re doing this!’”. The process of the creation of this piece is fascinating. For example, Senna famously always had the stitching and fabric salvage from his gloves on the outside, which was a challenge to cast in itself. Sponsor logos, stripes on the helmet and the laces of his boots all needed to be refined and refinished by hand. The finishing of these was so important and that’s where a lot of the time was spent — it all had to be right otherwise it just wouldn’t be Senna! “The technique of combining still photos to create a 3D model isn’t new, it’s the same kind of thing we all saw in the Matrix films, but if you want to make a life-size, hyper-realistic physical model from it, the detail needs to be thousands of times sharper, and we’re pretty sure we were the first in the world to do this with the end result being an artistic bronze. “With Senna, we had me inside a 16 camera grid whilst I span slowly on a turntable trying to hold a completely static pose, for about 90 seconds — this was excruciating given the position. The strain of holding still made me shake, which would throw all of the cameras out, and we’d have to do it again, I think 15 times until we eventually got it. I couldn’t stand up straight the following day, my hip flexors were screwed! “That night, I sent some still images to a few drivers for input to make sure I’d got the angles right, and although it was a yes, it was Jenson who pointed out that my heels weren’t lined up perfectly like they would have to be in the car on the heel stops, so we had to go through the whole exercise again from the start to correct that. This became the most powerful part of the statue I think, the whole-body dynamic twist resisting cornering forces, yet the heels are perfectly in line, the only thing that is. “I think the struggle for me in holding that position also translated into the dynamic. You can’t fake that, and the way the suit distorted with the body shape, I would never have sculpted the same fabric folds from scratch in clay. A few years later, we now have 180 cameras in a ball and can even freeze-frame a jump with near-perfect clarity!”. With the most technologically advanced phase complete and the 3D images of Paul in Ayrton’s race suit and helmet created (a defining moment in itself), the next phase was then over to the foundry, “The 3D images we created were heavily refined digitally, 3D printed in sections and then augmented with clay, going as far as pressing suit fabric into it and forming individual stitches”. It is this clay model that forms the master for the final statue. Every detail that is required must be included here. The process from this point is known as investment casting or lost-wax casting, a method dating back to the third millennium BC.
“The finished clay model is then cut into castable chunks, from which female silicone moulds are created. From the silicon moulds, a wax version of the statue is cast, which enables a ceramic mould to be cast from that. Once the ceramic mould is complete, the wax is melted out and replaced with bronze. The bronze is then welded back together to form the finished, full statue. “Finally, and actually the longest part of the process, the details are refinished and perfected, as something is always lost in casting. Laces, helmet straps and the like are cast separately. Statues are around 10 to 12 months’ work from concept to finish, and once the first statue is cast, from there, each edition of it takes 14 weeks to wax then bronze cast and refinish”.
The result of all this work has generated such excitement within the automotive industry. One of three full-size versions currently resides at the McLaren Technology Centre and another at the McLaren Barcelona museum. This work forms the start of the next chapter in Paul’s career, to celebrate and immortalise the icons and history of F1 in bronze.
Bruno and Bianca Senna along with McLaren were the main supporting factors for the project, and without them, this simply wouldn’t have been financially viable. Months of work and years of profit being ploughed into the development of a bronze statue is enough to give anyone a reality check as Paul admits, and big risks like this need support. “It's a strange thing, because you’re so immersed in a project for so long and kind of can’t see out from it, you lose perspective a bit. I mean, I knew it was cool from the get-go and that there had never been anything like it, but nine months later, I was a bit numb to it. The reaction when it went public was mind-blowing, though”. With the hard work and initial unveiling complete, standing back into the crowd and taking in everyone’s reactions without them knowing you’re there must have been so humbling. “It sounds corny, but seeing grown men in tears over something you’ve created is a very difficult thing to cogitate, and the little ‘oversteer dance’ that every other viewer does in front of the statue is perfect!”. On the topic of emotion, in the midst of the first year of the global pandemic, Paul has managed to follow up the Senna statue with another, arguably of equal prominence. To mark 50 years since the death of Bruce McLaren, Paul casually discussed the idea of creating another statue, an idea which seemed to get through to the right people, namely Zac Brown and Amanda McLaren. This sort of thing would never go ahead without the buy-in from Amanda particularly. “Driving home with Bruce’s open-faced helmet in the footwell, their most prized artefact, was most definitely a catch yourself moment, as was the reveal event that couldn’t have been more perfect!”, Paul tells us, “Being mid-lockdown, there were only five of us at McLaren HQ waiting for the sun to set to the right angle where the candles became visible, but still illuminated the statue. Because of social distancing, I was just sat cross-legged on the floor on my own for a good hour, taking in the eerily silent MTC, all of the championship-winning cars in half-darkness just behind the statue with so much history around them. Trying not to sound sappy, it was an almost religious experience that I will never forget”.
Paul has since been welcomed to the fold with a little help from Amanda (Molly) Taylor, with whom Paul used to work. A history with RS Audis and a recently-departed Lamborghini Urus gives us a glimpse into Paul’s car taste, and there’s also a Huracan Evo on order in a special brighter orange, Arancio Poz, so it’s safe to say he has the bug we all share. The work Paul has done with McLaren has opened up the doors for him to work with MSO, and there are some exciting ideas being discussed as well as the loan of a 765LT, to the envy of myself I must say! Plans for the future are mostly under NDA, but some incredible ideas are soon to come to fruition.
“I haven’t mentioned this anywhere publicly yet, but a 1985 JPS Senna sculpture is coming very soon, celebrating his first win in F1. It’s several years earlier than I originally intended, and easily the most emotive artwork I have ever created. He’s not wearing a helmet in this one, so I had to sculpt his head in clay from scratch”. I think I can safely say Paul has found just the right audience within the family, as his emotion and passion for motorsport is one we can all relate to. I for one wish I had the ability to express this as beautifully as Paul does, and we look forward to enjoying more of what he has planned. @pauloz
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CZECH MATES
Praga is ’s official racing partner for 2021. Here, Slovakian car designer, Juraj Mitro, and Praga’s Czech chief engineer, Jan Martinek, talk to about the development of the all-conquering Praga R1.
When did you discover your passion for car design and engineering?
Juraj Mitro: I was interested in racing cars as a child, but the pivotal moment for me was when I decided to study automotive design. I worked at Volkswagen after graduating, but soon realised I wanted to find my own way. The Czech Republic and Slovakia don’t have a history of small marques like you find in Great Britain, so I decided to create one. Initially, I designed the K1 Attack sports car, but my real passion lay in racing cars, something Praga has helped me unlock.
My priority is still the design, but now I also have to consider aero, construction and production technology. I loved analysing the aerodynamics of racing cars and working around homologation requirements. I studied the cars according to FIA regulations and looked for ways to make progress, to find an advantage. Jan Martinek: I studied Motorsport Engineering at Brunel University in West London between 2006 and 2009, including a summer work placement at Charouz Racing System where I worked as a second mechanic on the 2007 Mercedes-Benz AMG C-Class DTM. I worked as a suspension engineer for Skoda Motorsport from 2010 before joining Praga in 2013.
Tell us about the fruit of your labours, the Praga R1.
Martinek: Our vision was to build a truly modern car and we saw real potential in new carbon production technology. The R1 is constructed entirely of carbon fibre and designed with a focus on exceptional downforce, so yes, it is similar to what you find in top-tier sports car racing, but we combine it with affordable components which decreases production costs and therefore cost to the customer. For instance, we use a 2.0-litre Renault Alpine F4R engine, but it’s fitted with a unique turbo system that we have developed through three generations now. The upshot is a car similar to a Le Mans prototype, with similar output, but accessible to the experienced amateur.
Successfully combining advanced materials and production methods in a package that had to be relatively affordable to the end user must have been a huge challenge?
Mitro: Yes, it was, but it was one I’ve dreamt of all my life. As far as I know, no one else has tried to achieve it, so we didn’t have anybody to learn from and we had to start from scratch. That meant developing and testing absolutely everything ourselves, but with careful preparation, we passed all the tests and met the various FIA regulations. Now, happily, the results speak for themselves. Martinek: My biggest strength and curse at the same time is relentlessness. If I know a cause is worth it I will put my head down and go the extra length to get it done. I also feel very comfortable being the interconnection link between engineering and the marketing and sales side of a project. The best thing about working with Praga is the freedom to go our own way. At Praga, we go about things as we feel they should be done and at the best of our abilities with as few restrictions imposed by conformity as possible, and to me, getting the best out of oneself is the definition of satisfaction.
Juraj Mitro
Jan Martinek
So the R1 provides a new rung on the motorsport ladder, from karts to sports cars?
Martinek: Absolutely. Our customers do actually say that the driving experience is similar to karts and that was one of our main goals. The car is quick but approachable, and the aerodynamics work really well, so it opens up a new world for people who are not professional racers.
Is interest really starting to take off now?
Martinek: The R1 has gained popularity rapidly, noticeably in Great Britain where our main dealer is based. He bought a car from us in 2016 and raced it in the Britcar Endurance Championship. It went so well that the VR Motorsport team entered three cars last season and won. We made some modifications this year and the interest was so high again that we will have at least ten cars in the championship this coming season, but our goal will be to have a further ten cars lining up in order to have a single-make Praga series in Great Britain next year.
It’s an incredible achievement from such a small team, and in such a short timeframe. There must have been some significant hurdles for you in bringing the R1 to market so quickly?
Mitro: For me, the struggle between designer and constructor will always be present. It’s a kind of schizophrenia we all have to deal with, but the R1 is not an individual work, it is a collaboration, and I am glad to know that we all suppressed our egos and created something which is both beautiful to look at and successful on track.
If you go your own way like this, there are advantages and disadvantages. We were dependent on the FIA’s choice of race and their willingness to allow us to participate. At the beginning, the product was designed as a car which would compete in its own series as an attractive and reliable low-cost car, but then things began to evolve. When you design a single-make car, you don’t have to be so focused on the output, because every car is equal, but as soon as we began to compete against the rest of the world, the output was suddenly crucial, which is why we’ve now evolved the powertrain so much.
What else have you improved on?
Mitro: Well, safety for one. Nobody should be allowed to get into a car without feeling completely confident in it. We also increased the space in the car in order to make the drivers feel more comfortable over longer distances. Martinek: Being able to evolve the car around our clients is one of the great things about being a small but highly dedicated company, and we want to maintain that approach, even as we grow — it is absolutely crucial for us. We’re here to help more drivers improve their skills, and ultimately achieve their dream of competing at the highest levels of motorsport. We do that by listening, and genuinely sharing that dream. @instagram
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