With the beginning of spring, the Kentucky Derby Pageant is gearing as much as start. LEO sat down with native artist Liesl Lengthy Chaintreuil to debate her expertise creating the 2023 Kentucky Derby Pageant poster.
After a couple of minutes speaking together with her, it doesn’t take very lengthy to grasp why the Pageant reached out to Lengthy Chaintreuil to fee their official 2023 poster artwork. If there’s one takeaway from our dialog, it’s her honest appreciation for the place many people name house.
“I’ve at all times cherished portray paintings round Kentucky, I’ve at all times been drawn to horses,” mentioned Lengthy Chaintreuil. “I really like the fantastic thing about Kentucky, and all of the occasions they’ve to supply. I don’t know, I simply love Kentucky!”
Lengthy Chaintreuil was born and raised in Louisville, and has retained a deep attachment to the place. Rising up, she had a “great neighborhood neighborhood,” one which took half in Derby Pageant celebrations, usually assembly as much as watch Thunder Over Louisville or the Pegasus Parade.
Discussing her youth as an artist, Lengthy Chaintreuil credit her expertise attending the domestically and nationally well-known visible arts magnet program at duPont Guide Excessive College for serving to her attain her skilled objectives through the years. Particularly, Lengthy Chaintreuil praises how this system helped her become her personal as an artist, with a personalised model and confidence to later attend the Style Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, California.
“It was an enormous stepping stone,” she mentioned, “I used to be simply very grateful for all of the help and inspiring me to embrace my model.”
Even now, Lengthy Chaintreuil remembers the sheer motivation gained from being in neighborhood with friends who shared that motivation to create in their very own topics and distinctive methods. “I cherished it as a result of I used to be in lessons with those that have been actually pushed,” and “we have been collectively within the Annex constructing, simply creating artwork.”
That sense of neighborhood from her highschool years was formed by an affiliation between place and relationship, and extends to the current and Lengthy Chaintreuil’s lifelong bond to Kentucky. “Household is large to me,” she mentioned, explaining how Kentucky as a spot is synonymous with household, a way that now consists of her three younger youngsters and husband.
“I lived away for a short while. I went to California for college and I stayed on the market for nearly 9 years, and I believe folks at all times say you’ll go away, however some folks will come again.” Lengthy Chaintreuil definitely considers herself to be the kind of those that come again, too drawn in by the pull of a conceptual and bodily “house.”
She returned to Louisville in 2013, appreciating the expansion and expertise of being away, however she “at all times had this sense too of being excited to return again to Kentucky.” It was “the folks right here, rising up, my neighborhood.”
The theme of neighborhood is a noticeable fixed in her work. Particularly, the attraction {that a} sense of neighborhood can have as a healthful supply of pleasure, and of understanding that you just relate to somebody simply because the proximity they maintain to you has allowed a relationship to construct and turn into one thing valued. Talking together with her, I understood how that pleasure is tantamount to her paintings, expressed by means of detailed layers of shiny colours and patterns.
The paintings for the 2023 Derby Pageant displays this, that includes a small sea of individuals going through a skyline of town, framed by a sky of pegasi, shiny fireworks, and even brighter sizzling air balloons. With out seeing their faces, there’s nonetheless an unmistakable sense of marvel coming from the group as they appear up at a few of the extra iconic imagery of the Pageant.
Regardless of the similarities in model and qualities to her different paintings, Lengthy Chaintreuil did have a selected imaginative and prescient in thoughts, as a result of she “was so excited after they requested me. There are such a lot of great occasions, I needed to make all of them mix collectively, I actually determined to focus lots on the occasions within the sky, in order that’s form of the place I took it and bringing within the folks and skyline to actually present the joy to be on the occasions.”
This imaginative and prescient was formed by her lifelong expertise with the Pageant, of “rolling down the hill at Kingfish as a child, on the brink of watch the steamboat race and consuming hushpuppies with all my mates,” and driving bikes as a household to the waterfront to look at Thunder Over Louisville.
Lengthy Chaintreuil needed “to create this melody of occasions for the Derby Pageant,” one thing that showcased the number of occasions and evokes the identical pleasure of nostalgic reminiscences.
The work is titled the “Spirit of Kentucky,” and the poster captures how that sense of marvel bonds the group, turning them from neighbors and coworkers into one thing extra, one thing Matt Gibson, Derby Pageant President and CEO, considers “the spirit of the competition.”
Along with this “spirit,” Lengthy Chaintreuil additionally sought to exhibit the enjoyment of being in-person. “Particularly with issues occurring once more, and persons are so excited to have the ability to go to those occasions once more, I actually needed this piece to indicate that. And persons are current, they’re there, they usually’re able to have fun.”
Regardless of the methods we’ve discovered to construct neighborhood nearly over the previous couple of years, for some there’s nonetheless a marked distinction relating to the worth of in-person occasions. And for the reason that Kentucky Derby Pageant consists of so many occasions, it is sensible that for some, there’s a deep anticipation for the sensation of neighborhood they construct and have by means of attending and interesting in these occasions.
And with the poster paintings, Lengthy Chaintreuil’s contemporary tackle the idea sought to seize the celebratory tone and camaraderie of the Pageant. She offered extra perception on a few of the intentional components, describing how “in my thoughts, I consider celebration once I consider balloons and sample and colour within the sky, they usually deliver the sunshine within the sky as properly so I used to be actually excited to include the balloons. It’s at all times enjoyable seeing balloons within the sky!”
The positioning of the symbolically essential pegasus on this yr’s poster was additionally intentional, and by situating it within the sky close to these components of celebration, Lengthy Chaintreuil wove the 2 collectively.
Jennifer Morgan, the Derby Pageant merchandising supervisor, mentioned “Liesl actually re-imagined the Pegasus for this yr’s poster and integrated it in a wholly new approach. As a substitute of it being the focus and a literal depiction, it’s a part of the feel within the background, whereas nonetheless being a key component of the piece.”
On the Derby Pageant web site, you could find each poster since German-American artist Peter Max’s first installment within the sequence in 1981. Some are out of inventory, however most posters are nonetheless obtainable to buy now, with costs starting from $25 to $30. Through the years, the main points of the posters have different however virtually all contained some model of a horse, later shifting to function the Pageant’s iconic pegasus.
LEO requested if the forty-two earlier posters within the sequence had any affect on her take, particularly with the noticeable distinction. She mentioned, “Naturally I take a look at them after which I take my very own imaginative and prescient and pull a bit of bit right here and there however I had a imaginative and prescient.”
If you’re concerned about buying your individual piece of this “imaginative and prescient,” and different Pageant merchandise, you are able to do so on the Pageant Unveiled occasion, offered by 4 Roses Bourbon, on Thursday, March 16, on the Mellwood Artwork Heart. The Pageant’s full merchandise line together with the 2023 poster will probably be obtainable, in addition to the chance to have yours signed by the artist herself.
For those who can’t make it to the Mellwood Artwork Heart, there are a restricted variety of signed copies, in addition to common prints, obtainable on the official Kentucky Derby Pageant web site, with transport beginning on March 17, after the official launch. You may see and buy extra of Lengthy Chaintreuil’s work on her official web site or Etsy store; in the event you favor in-person purchases, there’s a record on her web site of native boutiques and galleries at present providing a few of Lengthy Chaintreuil’s unique work and prints. •
