Synesthesia or emotion? One, confusion of the senses, the other goosebumps, heart pumping, a slight knotting in the stomach. Stand alone, studying a large John Ketchell canvas – you feel both. Your imagination runs wild! How can you hear and feel so much from an inanimate object? There’s no doubt these paintings can play tricks on the mind.

“I like painting anything that goes fast,” John says. “Aircraft, horses, whatever, but cars are the thing I really love. I can’t stand doing paintings of still cars. I always try to introduce a bit of movement.”

​John has a tendency to make light of his talent. Take a painting such as Storming Drive, which shows the Posey / Bucknum Ferrari 512S blasting through the rain-soaked darkness at the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, and you’ll see that “a bit of movement” doesn’t begin to describe it. 

John was able to draw from an early age and always liked cars. After school he went to do an engineering degree. “I enjoyed the drawing and sketching much more than the workshop time,” he confesses. “A new art school had just started up in Preston, and seeing the people there were having more fun than me, I decided to join them.” A long career as an illustrator and designer followed before John decided, at 52, “to pack it in” and become a full-time artist.

The way John uses his acrylics now is a technique he has developed over time. “When I first started, my paintings were much tighter. I quite liked them, and people seemed to buy them, but I thought they were boring and so started working in a looser style.”

John’s paintings may look like brushstrokes thrown quickly onto a canvas, but look carefully and you will see that each has been carefully considered before being applied, and the draftsmanship beneath is second to none. Everything in perfect proportion and rendered with just a few dabs of paint with a flat-ended brush. There’s clearly still an engineer in there somewhere.

Each painting starts out as a pencil or color rough, about 8.25"x11.75", which is then worked up into the final artwork. John works from a stack of reference material crammed into his small studio alongside his brushes, paints and canvases. Books, magazines and a large library of photographs he has taken at places like Goodwood and Silverstone.

John’s favorite subjects are the GP cars of the 1930s and the sports prototypes of the 1960s and ’70s. “Modern photographs of these are useful, but many of the cars I like to paint do not exist any longer, or at least not in their original form, and so it’s period images that I need as references – I often use many photographs to build up an image,” he says. “Sometimes I have to use artistic license to achieve the image I want, but you have to do the best from the reference material available. I always have an idea in my mind of how the painting will look when it’s finished. Sometimes they turn out better.”

“There are times when I feel I need a diversion from cars. Now and then I’ll do a portrait, or some horses or an airplane, just to make sure painting cars never starts to feel like “work.” I approach every painting as if I were painting it for myself, and luckily other people buy them.”

Indeed, his work has long been in demand among collectors, including Luca di Montezemolo, who hung a Ketchell canvas in Enzo’s old office during his time at the helm of Ferrari.

Original paintings from £1,500 (approx. $1,970 USD); Limited edition prints from £49 (approx. $64 USD).

PLEASE NOTE: currency rates fluctuate, US dollar prices are all approximate.

​Rupert Whyte

Counting Gordon Crosby and Terence Cuneo amongst your biggest influences is always going to stand you in good stead as a motoring artist, as long as you have the skill to carry it off… luckily Paul Dove has it in abundance.

​Although Dove studied art at college in his late teens and he confesses that much of his technique is self-taught. Buoyed by the confidence that winning the prestigious 2001 International Motoring Art Competition at only 19 gave Dove, he decided to dive headlong into a professional career of painting full time. “I’ve never had a real job” he quips as we talk over his love of motorsport and its history. “When I first started to get interested in Motor Sport history, Graham Hill soon became my favorite. He was perhaps the biggest character in an era when all drivers were big characters!

My Dad’s hero, Jim Clark, I think was ultimately the greatest, but Graham made up for any lack of natural ability with determination and a desire to win, meaning if Jim was leading, he was often the man leading the chase. He won a lot of races, in all types of cars and his comeback after his crash at Watkins Glen in 1969, for me, underlines his racing hero status.” When Dove is not painting, he is passionate about collecting items related to Graham Hill.

​Working from his studio in the heart of beautiful Cornwall, Dove is inspired by old motor racing film footage, and vintage magazine articles to dream up ideas for his paintings. Each artwork starts with a rough pencil layout sketch before transferring the most important reference points onto the canvas. In addition to the vintage references Dove uses his own modern reference photography. This enables him to put the viewer in a position that would not usually be possible - directly in front of the Beast of Turin as it thunders across the beach towards you, for example. 

Working from his studio in the heart of beautiful Cornwall, Dove is inspired by old motor racing film footage, and vintage magazine articles to dream up ideas for his paintings. Each artwork starts with a rough pencil layout sketch before transferring the most important reference points onto the canvas. In addition to the vintage references Dove uses his own modern reference photography. This enables him to put the viewer in a position that would not usually be possible - directly in front of the Beast of Turin as it thunders across the beach towards you, for example. 

​Initially Dove used oils for his work, but now favors acrylics for the flexibility they provide when he wants to work up an image quickly, or make changes as the painting progresses. He says “As I immerse myself in the story of the painting, I sometimes need to add details that I had not initially planned; other times I need to leave some out - paintings evolve.” 

    Look at any Dove artwork and you will see an abundance of movement, atmosphere and a clever use of lighting. A skillful painting style that sees a strong light source appear from outside of the canvas margins in many of his renditions. Conveying a story and portraying a mood is important to Dove, and he says “I like a strong contrast between light and dark, that’s often why I paint wet races at night.” He has also created his own, unique style of capturing movement using repetitive brush marks on the canvas, a sort of painterly stop-frame animation.

​Inspired by an old 1950’s AutoSport magazine from his reference library and taking him almost a month to complete, Dove’s most recent painting of Eugene Castelotti  - King of the Mountains, not only shows his skillful use of light and portrayal of movement, it also clearly demonstrates his fine figurative work, both of spectators and the driver; “…any racing driver that you can see in my paintings must be a true likeness, his expression as much as his looks.” says Dove.

Paul Dove’s work is comparable in many respects to Argentinian artist Alfredo de le Maria, and with prices currently starting at just £1250 for an original painting (around 10% of the price of a de la Maria), it may  be a wise collector who puts a few Dove’s into his collection before the rest of the art world catches on. Limited edition prints are a good value from £129 ($159 US).

NOTE: Currency rates fluctuate, US dollar prices are approximate.
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Rupert Whyte