Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / One Track Mind: Bob Gillespie’s Living Legacy in Paint

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One Track Mind: Bob Gillespie’s Living Legacy in Paint · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
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all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder what's How did
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they get that job or become that person?
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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For our guest, there has always been a joy to drawing and painting.
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His conscious ego fades into almost selfless, relaxed concentration.
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Time dissolves and the decisions become intuitive and not reasoned.
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Kurt Vonnegut put it like this, to practice any art, how well or how
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badly, is a way to make your soul grow.
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So do it.
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And with that, Bob Gillespie considers himself very fortunate to
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have witnessed more than his fair share of history at the racetrack.
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He never thought his childhood heroes would someday have his
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art hanging on their walls.
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And he's here to share his story and how he got the chance to
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honor them while exploring ways to capture their sport in paint.
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And with that, let's welcome Bob back to the show.
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It's a break fix.
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Hello, Eric.
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Hey, Bob.
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So the last time we got together, you were here chatting about the
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genesis of the Green Grand Prix.
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And in that episode, you mentioned some of your personal background, but
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this time we're going to take a deeper dive into the who, what, when, and
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where of Bob Gillespie, the artist rather than Bob, the environmentalist.
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So let's start off talking about how all this came to be, which came
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first, the artist or the petrol head?
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I would say both of them came first at the age of about five years old.
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My dad was a pilot and I was crazy about airplanes.
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And then when I went to my, uh, first Watkins Glen race, All my airplane
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drawings switched to, uh, D jaguars and lotuses and all kinds of exotically
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shaped, streamlined, rolling sculptures that reminded me of airplanes.
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They were fast.
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All that excitement was something that just was already growing in
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me and already nurtured by my dad.
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I wanted to design cars.
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Dad was an aeronautical engineer.
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He came home from World War II, finished his degree and took over the family milk
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business, but he was a born engineer.
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He wanted his sons to be interested in all kinds of mechanical things.
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And I was supposedly the smartest, one of the four brothers.
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I don't know how true that is, but I wanted to design cars and
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I guess that was good enough.
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And so, um, I.
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Decided, Hey, I want to apply to General Motors Fisher Body Institute.
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Well, I had an interview and I was rejected and I thought, Oh, well, my
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fallback is mechanical engineering.
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So I studied mechanical engineering for three years, took the calculus, took
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the physics, all the numbers, all the formulas and all that, and realized, Hey.
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I thought I wanted to draw cars, and there was nobody there that was designing cars.
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Well, what do I really like to do?
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I like to draw, so I took one course at Potsdam State, which was just
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down the street from Clarkson College in the north country of New York
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State, and I knew I had to switch.
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All my credits, surprisingly, were transferable.
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I majored in art and photography, got my degree in art.
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For two years, went back and got my master's degree in fine arts,
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painting and photography at Oswego state college in upstate New York.
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But I had always drawn cars.
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I've done a lot of abstract paintings.
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I've done many other kinds of artwork.
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But my love was always cars.
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I just kept coming back to that.
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I was fortunate to get a job just 30 miles up the road from Watkins Glen.
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And we went to the races every chance I could.
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I took photographs.
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I did drawings from my photographs.
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Started doing paintings, then the research center in Watkins Glen started up in 1998.
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That was five years before I retired from teaching.
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And I thought, well, if I'm ever going to really jump into
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this, now's the time to do it.
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So, I met a lot of people at Watkins Glen.
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Cameron Argettsinger, Bill Green, the historian, a number of the original
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drivers that were still around.
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They started saying, well, when are you going to do a painting of me?
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And so I said, get in line.
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This is going to be fun.
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I've done about 130 paintings of the races at Watkins Glen and some other
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locations too, but primarily American road racing and Watkins Glen history.
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When was your first.
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First race, because there's three different versions of Watkins Glen.
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And in your book, you reflect a lot on the early, early days,
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the road course around the gorge.
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And then you talk about Watkins Glen, the interim circuit, and then
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we have the Grand Prix circuit.
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So when did you get your first taste of the Glen?
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Was it in those early street racing days?
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No, I missed those.
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I saw my first race in 1960.
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It was the year before the first United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
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It was a Formula Libra.
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And so we had D Type Jaguars, Sterling Moss, and Rob Walker's
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Formula One Lotus 18, I think it was.
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There were Cooper Climax, Jack Brabham was there.
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It was a mixed bag of cars, and it was so exciting because
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it was such a variety of cars.
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And the sounds were incredible.
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And the smells, because some of them were burning alcohol.
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It was amazing.
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I was 11 years old.
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And that's a perfect age for a kid to get hooked on cars.
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And it was just a few months after I had seen the epic movie Ben Hur, in which
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there was a very exciting chariot race.
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My brothers and I were crazy about chariot races.
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We had horses.
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And so, you know, a four horse hitch on a Roman chariot, that
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was just such a wonderful movie.
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When I went to Watkins Glen, here was what I saw as a Roman amphitheater
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with a modern chariot race, with entries from all over the world.
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All kinds of names that I couldn't pronounce.
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It was very exciting.
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There's a lot of facets to art and to painting, and you studied a lot
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of different things and probably took inspiration from some of the masters.
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And in the book, you mentioned all the paintings are acrylic, unless you
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otherwise stated that they weren't.
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Why did you choose that as your medium?
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You know, versus oils versus water versus this.
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And there's a lot of pen and ink and charcoal preliminary sketches
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that gets you to your paintings.
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So how did you develop your style?
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How did you choose your artistic style?
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I had done a lot of oil paintings.
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Oil painting is a ritual because the paint has to dry.
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The colors are beautiful.
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They're very vibrant.
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They're glossy, but it's a slow process.
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Acrylic, I could paint fast, and I like to paint fast.
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If I goofed up, I could wait five minutes, let it dry, and put on
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another coat of paint and fix it up.
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If I made a mistake in an oil painting, I had to sit there and wait and look
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at the darn thing for too long before I could paint over it or change it.
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The technology of paint has really changed a lot, but I do enjoy oil
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painting, but I just like to paint fast.
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Considering some of the larger scale paintings that you do, like your murals,
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that would make sense that you want to do them as quickly as possible.
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I couldn't see doing the side of a building in oil paint.
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No, no.
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And another reason why you should never do that in oil paint is because oil paint
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will not flex like acrylic or latex paint.
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Acrylic or latex.
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It can take humidity changes much better.
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It can take temperature changes better.
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So with a mural, you really have to work with water based paints.
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But yeah, for smaller paintings, I'd love to try some oil paintings
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again, you know, get back into it.
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I've done a combination of acrylic and oils.
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Both.
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I've done a lot of airbrush also.
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I love airbrush, but I just keep gravitating back to acrylics.
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I'm just so used to them.
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You paint with what you're familiar with, and the only trick of acrylic
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paints is they dry a little darker than they look when they're wet.
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And so you have to have that in mind all the time.
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Reminds me of some of the other artists that we've had on the show.
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For instance, Lynn Heiner, you know, she falls back to her paint knives.
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That's what she's known for.
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And that's what she got used to doing.
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It was something different pinstripe, Chris Dunlop.
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He came from the auto body world and he does a lot of these one time passes,
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a lot of airbrushing, because he comes from the body shop industry originally.
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So to your point, you kind of fall back on what you got good at.
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And that's your go to, right?
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In terms of style.
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Yes.
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There's something about working with thick paint.
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Just the physical nature of the paint itself and just pushing
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it on a canvas or on a board.
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There's some kind of therapy in there that's a lot different than using an
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airbrush and these fine mists, you know.
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Let's talk a little bit more about the murals that you've created.
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If any of the listeners have had the opportunity or will get the opportunity
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to go to Watkins Glen, It doesn't take much to run into a Bob Gillespie
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mural downtown, either on the side of the building, inside the Chamber
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of Commerce, all over the place.
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How did you get into doing these large scale paintings, the murals that you see?
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The first mural I did, when I was in third grade, my art teacher invited
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me, and there were three or four other kids doing that too, to paint
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a window in the downtown area where I grew up, which was Fulton, New York,
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and it was right next to the theater.
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And it was Christmas time, and so we were painting snowflakes, and
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I just really enjoyed working big.
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My next experience was in college, a hamburger place.
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It wasn't McDonald's.
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It was before McDonald's.
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There's outlets called Carroll's Hamburgers, at least in the Northeast.
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While I was at Potsdam State working as a painting major,
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I was invited to do a mural.
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In fact, it was a history mural to put up in a hamburger place at fast
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food, which is only in a college town.
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I guess you get a job like that, but I enjoyed that.
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I've always loved history.
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I mean, that's a big part of it.
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I love history.
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All aspects of it.
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These murals that I did all involve specific moments in history, and I try
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to capture them as accurately as I can.
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So let's talk about your latest one, which can be seen right now if you go
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to the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce right downtown on Franklin Street,
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and it's also the bottom half of the cover of your book, One Track Mind.
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So tell us about how you put it together.
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Why you were commissioned to do it.
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What's it all about?
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What's the story trying to tell?
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The story is trying to tell Denver Cornets story.
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He told us to many people about how the only time he had polled position
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in a race was in the 1952 queen Catherine cup, they drew straws.
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And that's how I got the pole position.
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Actually, it was a Le Mans start.
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They had to run across the road, hop in the cars and go.
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Denver was the first car.
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The trouble was Bill Spear had the means to buy a real brand new Asuka,
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which in 1952 was, was just sensational.
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It had 1500 CC displacement.
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This race was for one and a half liter cars or less.
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Bill Spear, Drew, I don't know.
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Fourth or fifth place.
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Denver told me that he pulled out, he led the race through the first two
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turns, and then Bill Spear passed him.
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Like he was pasted on the guardrail is what Denver said.
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He wanted me to do the start of that race because I could show him in the
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lead, but you see Bill Spear in the Oscar kind of looming up behind him.
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There's a real narrative element to that painting.
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And you can see that many of these cars.
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Race with license plates on them.
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They were driven to the track, but Bill Spear had this brand new Oscar
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and he just ran away with this race, but I thought it was a dramatic scene.
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If I could put the viewer right in the middle of the road and in a mural.
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That would be nice because, uh, you know, it's kind of intimidating for sure.
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And having seen it in person, I mean, it's so big and the perspective, the
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cars almost seem like they're going to run you over there that lifelike.
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And they're that big.
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And you're like, man, they're just coming right at you.
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Almost jumping off the wall with something as large as the mural
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that's at the chamber of commerce.
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How long did that take to create?
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It actually took 12 weeks.
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But I had to commute.
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I would work three or four days a week, maybe six hours, seven hours.
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And I took two weeks off, but there was a lot of setup and teardown
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because I couldn't leave everything out because they opened early
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and sometimes stayed open late.
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So I had to clean up my paint, put my equipment away.
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So yeah, that set up and tear down was a kind of a pain, but it was actually, that
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whole experience was wonderful because I met people from all over the world.
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They have thousands of people come in during the summer from
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all kinds of distant places.
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I made an effort to talk to anyone that would say hi or just say hello.
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Gee, that looks nice, you know, asked him where they were from and just
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started up a little conversation.
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So that took a while also.
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When we were there together looking at it, you had mentioned that there was a lot
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of issues you had with lighting doing a mural that large inside of the building.
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You needed it really, really dark.
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Yes, because they didn't want me working in there at night.
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If they had given me a key to the place, it would have been a lot easier.
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I was working from a sketch the fastest way to do it.
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There's really two ways you can grid a wall out and scale
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your sketch with the same grid.
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Scale it up to a wall, or you can project it on the wall, or
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you can do both, which I did.
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And so I had to get it dark in the uh, chamber of Commerce in
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the middle of the day, and I would have them turn off the lights.
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I would hang sheets or drop cloths, whatever I could find, to block out
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all the windows, so that I could take my Kodak carousel projector.
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It's hard to find slide film anymore, so I've got a slide mount machine, so I
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took negatives of print film, put them in slide mounts, and I had the image
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divided up into nine sections, and so I could project them up on a grid, one by
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one, Paint each one and then key the next projection off that and trace the basic
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lines so I could grow the image that way.
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The disadvantage for the Chamber of Commerce was it looked like it
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was closed in the middle of the day when they're in peak tourist season.
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You make it sound so simple, but I guarantee it's more
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complicated than we realize.
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What a feat of engineering in a way.
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To take your drawing that you probably did on an eight and a half by 11 and
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scale it up to something that's 40 by 20.
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You have to decide on the major lines.
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There's no way that's a very complex image and you have to just figure
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which lines are the most important and which ones you can just fill in.
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It is tricky.
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At least you've got the basic perspective, right?
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Positions of things so that they're the same size, but it helps.
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I've done about 20 murals.
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That also helps.
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It all takes practice.
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As you've been going through all these different paintings, you mentioned
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over a hundred, I counted in the book, 84 paintings alone, just in
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the painting section, how did you choose what you were going to do next?
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Was it just, you had a queue of people like a deli counter going, I'm
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number you know, 92 now serving 92, you know, the next one in line, or
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did you just paint what you wanted?
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Some of them were requested by people.
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Some of them were my own ideas.
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Many of them originated in stories that I just wanted to experience
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myself in a visual form, and I wanted to compose a scene in a way that was
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plausible, that captured the excitement, because there's a lot of photography.
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Some is excellent, but not all.
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You can paint from a perspective that you can't photograph from.
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In other words, you can't stand in the middle of the road during
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a race and take a photograph.
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I can stand in the middle of the road as a painter and paint
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those cars coming right at me.
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You know, one exciting aspect that you can use to get attention is you
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put the spectator, the viewer of the painting, in a position of danger.
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You know, uh, that definitely gets their attention.
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You know, these cars are coming right at you, but there's several of your paintings
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that you even mentioned that as you're describing them, you know, the police
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officer shooing people off the bridge and you're off to the side as the cameraman,
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or, you know, There's the one shot of the cars coming up the S's in the early days
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of the third generation of the track, what we know now to be the Grand Prix track.
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It feels like the car is just leaping out of the page in your direction.
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Another one is that swooping downhill turn at, you know, 100 plus miles an hour.
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It just gives you this rush, even though everything's completely static, but you
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get this feeling of how fast the driver is going down along the gorge down that hill.
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What an incredible job.
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A lot of that is derived from photography where you can pan with
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your subject, follow the car, the car is going to be in focus, but the
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background is going to be smeared out.
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You have to know how much to smear the background.
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If you totally just make it a bunch of horizontal lines, it's going to be boring.
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You still have to maintain some recognizability of that
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background, you know, so that people understand where it is.
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It just makes it more exciting, I think.
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It's always a challenge to try to find different ways
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of capturing motion in paint.
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Before we transition to talking a little bit more about the book, which
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we kind of are walking backwards into the big question of why'd you write
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the book, but we'll get to that.
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I got a pit stop question I got to ask you, Bob.
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We love asking artists and photographers this question, which
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is, The most beautiful or the sexiest car of all time, in your opinion.
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Is it that 930 Cabriolet that's on the back cover of the
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book or is it something else?
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No, you know what I'm always drawn to is the Ferrari 250 GT short wheelbase.
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Not the GTO that followed it.
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I remember my father had a sports car graphic magazine.
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It was before it was car driver.
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Maybe it was road and track.
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I can't remember.
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But they had this, when the GT category was introduced, and I think it was
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1960, 61, somewhere in there, they had these, Cars that were GTs and they had
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a 250 GT short wheelbase, and I just thought that was the most gorgeous
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thing, and I've never changed my mind.
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It's just this, for me, this classic shape, and it has something
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to do with the proportion of it.
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So do you believe that?
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The wives tale, if you want to call it that, that at that same time that that
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car was being developed, that Enzo turned around and said that the E Type Jag was
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the most beautiful car in the world.
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No, I don't believe that myth.
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No, I hope he never said that.
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A car has to look fierce, you know, and that, that was Enzo's attitude.
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I mean, who knows, maybe he said it, but I was at the New York auto
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show at the debut of the XKE Jag.
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My dad took me and my four brothers.
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To the New York auto show and let's see that that had to be 1961.
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I think the E type was introduced and they had it.
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So they had the XK E there, but then they had a C type and a D Jag.
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And we could walk up close to those and examine all of it.
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It was wonderful.
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I love Jaguars also.
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I mean, there's a lot of cars, but there's just, Something classic that
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just never changes about that 250 GT.
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So the inverse of that would be pretty obvious.
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The ugliest car of all time.
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Is there one that gets under your skin?
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Or as an artist, do you find the beauty in, in all designs?
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I hated the AMC.
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Was it a Gremlin?
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What was the bubble?
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The Pacer.
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Pacer.
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Is that the Pacer?
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The one that inspired the 928.
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Allegedly, that car is way too big for the shape of it.
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If that was a micro car, it might work, but it did not work.
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Well, you're right, Bob.
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It didn't work on multiple levels, but there's cult followings for everything.
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That's true.
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And my neighbor had one, so I had to look at that thing.
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So let's switch gears.
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Let's talk about your book, One Track Mind.
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As you said, you're a student of history and of art and a motorsports
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enthusiast through and through.
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You've been hooked since day one.
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And as you said, your paintings are this chronology, they're telling a
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story of time past and of races gone and people, you know, drivers you met,
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there's a whole ethos to one track mind.
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When you read the book cover to cover, you realize you're telling not just your
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life story, but the life story of others and people that you've met along the way.
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And so I wondered, you know, as an artist, And a photographer, what
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made you decide to just say, you know what, I'm going to write a book
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and not only just write a book, but you're self publishing this book.
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So you're doing a lot more of the work that let's say
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other people would farm out.
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So to take on this challenge at this point, why I wanted to do it myself
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because I wanted it to be in my own words.
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And I was frustrated that my three favorite painting instructors That
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I had in undergraduate school and grad school never wrote a book.
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They never wrote much about what they did and why they did it.
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And when my favorite one, his name is George D.
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Green.
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He had one man shows in New York City, paintings and art
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museums throughout the country.
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When he passed away, I wrote something, the funeral home, you could write notes.
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And so I wrote something.
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I got a phone call from his widow, from his wife.
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And she wanted to know about him, and I told stories of how he nurtured
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me and my attitudes towards art.
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And she said, well, you know, George just spent all this time in the
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studio and never wrote much about what he did and why he did it.
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And I showed her some of my artwork, corresponded back and forth.
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She was on the West Coast.
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She said, well, I want you to write a book.
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So she inspired me.
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And then this other patron of mine was also a book publisher.
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He wanted to do a book about my artwork, but I told him,
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I guess I'm a control freak.
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I kept putting him off because I knew if there was going to be a book,
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I wanted it to be in my own words.
23:02
And my dad had written his memoirs.
23:05
And that was part of it too, just for the family.
23:08
He never published it.
23:09
I always enjoyed selling things too, because my family
23:13
was in the milk business.
23:14
As soon as I could ride a bike, I was sitting around knocking on doors on a
23:18
Saturday morning, collecting milk bills.
23:20
I was nervous as hell, but you got over it and pretty soon you enjoyed collecting
23:25
money from people, you know, hey.
23:27
And I thought, well, if I write it and sell it myself, Then I cut out the
23:33
middleman and I had always worked with a printer for my calendars that I did.
23:38
And I was very satisfied with their work.
23:40
I didn't know that they could print a book, but I mentioned it to them and
23:44
they said, yeah, yeah, we can do that.
23:46
So we started talking and it was affordable for me.
23:50
And now I'm in my second printing.
23:52
It's just the way I was born.
23:55
Brought up, I think, added into that whole thing of self-publishing.
23:59
The way the book is designed, if you saw it sitting on my coffee
24:03
table or yours, you go, man, that's a gorgeous coffee table book.
24:06
And you can kind of thumb through it and get the idea of what's in there, right?
24:09
The large portion of your art collection, not all of your art, it focuses
24:12
specifically on motorsport and cars and racing and all those kinds of things.
24:16
But if I was gonna say, you know, you need to read Bob's book.
24:19
Are there particular paintings or sections of the book that you would
24:23
say really hone in on this, something that is very touching for you?
24:26
Like, we're all going to have different interpretations of it,
24:28
but Bob, in your own words, what should we be focusing in on?
24:31
Is there a particular portion of it?
24:33
I think you should be focusing in on how artwork that's
24:38
exciting keeps a person young.
24:41
For me, painting these pictures and viewing these paintings
24:45
Keeps the child in me alive.
24:47
Yes.
24:47
I'm a landscape painter that happens to put cars as exciting focal points.
24:52
I love landscape painting, but I need something besides just scenic qualities.
24:57
I need that excitement.
24:58
It's the same reason that I go to automobile races.
25:01
It's pretty basic when it comes to noise.
25:05
Smells, sights.
25:07
It's a spectacle.
25:08
Painting a spectacle of road racing keeps my mind in that awake stage.
25:14
For me, it's a perfect vehicle for me to keep that childhood excitement
25:18
that I had when I was 11 years old watching those Dee Jaguars and
25:22
then Sterling Mawson and stuff.
25:24
Formula One and it's my way of keeping that experience with me.
25:28
The act of painting it is exciting.
25:30
If you read the entire thing and you really analyze the paintings that are
25:34
there, if they had been laid out in sequential order, you could almost
25:39
flip through and turn by turn go through the track, whether it was the
25:43
first generation, second generation or third generation of Watkins Glen.
25:46
And so what I took away from it and I sort of wondered was Bob painted it.
25:50
a scene on almost every turn, straight away chicane that exists or existed.
25:57
But what's his favorite?
25:58
Like I couldn't hone in on, okay, he's done this turn so many times.
26:01
That must be his favorite vantage point on the track.
26:04
That's where he likes to watch at Watkins Glen.
26:07
So what is that for you?
26:08
On the original track, 6.
26:10
6 mile round the gorge circuit.
26:13
My favorite spot is right after they come into town around that
26:17
flat iron building, that brick one with the French mansard roof.
26:22
They came down this steep hill.
26:24
They came screaming into town and then around that left hand turn and then had
26:29
to break and turn on to market street.
26:32
My favorite scene is looking up 4th Street, which is that street where
26:38
they turn on to Franklin Street from seeing the cars just after they've
26:43
come down the hill and around that flat iron building seems to have all
26:47
the ingredients I really like and it's architecture, it's cars and it's trees
26:53
and it's people all in close proximity.
26:57
On the, uh, present Grand Prix circuit, one favorite spot I've got is Turn
27:03
8, which it's the heel of the boot.
27:06
They come around, and then they go up the little hill, and then around the
27:10
slowest turn back onto the NASCAR track.
27:13
The reason I like that turn is because you can stand there, and
27:17
I think I put this in a book.
27:19
There's hardly anybody there.
27:20
It's like the cars are putting on a show just for me.
27:23
They come in from my left.
27:25
They go right in front of me.
27:27
I can watch how they exit the turn, and then I can watch them
27:31
go up around that slow turn.
27:33
It's almost like a carousel turn, and you can stand right in the middle of it.
27:36
And there's no huge fence.
27:38
That's what I like about it too.
27:40
Well, one of the coolest pieces of trivia that I took away from the book
27:43
is sort of in that middle section of paintings when you start talking about
27:47
Briggs Cunningham, the Cunningham team, racing at Le Mans, racing at the
27:51
Glen, the Cobras, the C4Rs, and you mention the That one of those Cunningham
27:57
paintings that you were commissioned to make was actually used in the cover of
28:00
Burt Levy's book, The Last Open Road.
28:02
I said, wow, what an honor.
28:04
What a little known fact.
28:06
Bob Gillespie's art is on the cover of this really famous book.
28:09
How did that make you feel to be involved in that?
28:12
Oh, it was a huge breakthrough.
28:13
Just that Cunningham's at Stonebridge painting was a real game changer for me.
28:18
And that, I think I painted that in 1998.
28:21
Right when the Motor Racing Research Center was starting up,
28:25
I sold a gazillion prints of it.
28:27
The Cunningham people came up to me and said, hey, we're making
28:30
some reproductions, can we use that on our promotional materials?
28:35
And then Bert came up and wanted to put it on his book.
28:38
I had somebody tell me the other day, wait a minute, that's not on the book.
28:42
And I said, well, it's on the jacket that was on the book.
28:45
He didn't print the ink on the hardcover itself, it's on the jacket.
28:49
It's on the jacket.
28:50
But yeah, that, that was a big deal and it was a real honor.
28:54
It was a recognition thing that was humbling, really.
28:57
I never sold that painting.
28:59
That painting is hanging in our living room.
29:01
I'll never sell it.
29:04
You got a copy of the last open road.
29:06
You need two signatures now, two autographs on there.
29:09
You need Bert's and Bob's on that thing to make it look right.
29:12
That's right.
29:12
Going back and talking about art styles for a moment, one of the other things
29:16
that I learned from reading the book and learning about your past and how you
29:21
came up through art and became an art teacher and all that is you mentioned
29:24
the early days of photorealism, which has really taken to new artists.
29:30
Now you see a ton of photorealistic paintings popping up.
29:33
All over the place on social media and on the internet thinking about Samantha
29:37
Zimmerman and Chris Dunlop and Manu Kampart and all these guys that you
29:41
look at these things and you're like, is that a photo or is that a painting?
29:44
Especially when you're far away from it, you realize once you zoom in,
29:47
it's not a poster, it's been painted.
29:49
Why such a draw into this high resolution type of painting?
29:53
Is it something that you would teach in class?
29:55
Is that one of the skills that you'd pass on to folks?
29:58
I view photo realism as a technical exercise.
30:01
You're copying a photograph.
30:03
A lot of people that do photorealism use three colors like the, uh, you
30:08
know, cyan, magenta, yellow, and they mix them so they can reproduce
30:13
the colors just like a photograph.
30:16
Why are people drawn to that?
30:18
I think it's just because of the magic of photorealism.
30:21
Creating an illusion on a two dimensional surface, you can kind of
30:26
make it disappear like a photograph.
30:28
Our lives are surrounded by photography.
30:31
We're so used to photography, we think, Oh, that looks just like a
30:35
photograph, meaning photographs are the most realistic images around.
30:40
Well, they're not.
30:41
If you look at some artwork that was done in the 1800s.
30:46
Like a Vermeer.
30:47
Yes, 1600s.
30:49
Yeah, a lot of Dutch painters, but there have been a lot of painters that have
30:53
done what you'd call super realism.
30:56
Which is more realistic than a photograph because they get details in the darks.
31:02
And details in the lights, you've got a full range that you could only get with
31:07
multiple exposures of a photograph, just because the human eye can detect, you
31:13
know, like a million different colors.
31:15
Don't quote me on that, but photography is limited.
31:19
But you can get more colors and paint than you can with photography.
31:22
That also lends to a conversation around the next generation of, let's say,
31:28
super realistic or photorealistic art.
31:30
And that's coming from AI generated these bots, like a stable
31:37
diffusion, a Dali, a mid journey, you know, those kinds of things.
31:40
So what's your feeling, what's your take, what's your opinion on
31:43
these types of programs that are now available and do they take away
31:47
from the artistic world or the.
31:48
Augmenting it in some way, I'd be interested to see AI generate
31:54
a copy of one of my paintings, you know, which would be illegal.
31:58
You know, you sign and date a painting, you sign a number, a
32:02
print, you have a certificate of authenticity that comes along with it.
32:07
I think AI generated artwork, and maybe I'm being naive about this,
32:12
just make artwork from a good painter even more valuable, simply because
32:18
the buyer knows it's one of a kind, where AI could generate two paintings
32:24
that are the same quite easily.
32:26
I don't know if they do.
32:27
I haven't seen how many lawsuits there have been yet on AI generated, but
32:32
there's also the, the surface too.
32:35
There's a richness in the surface of a real painting that I would
32:40
like to see AI try to copy.
32:43
You know, in a one of a kind image.
32:46
Yeah, you could make a lot of different copies of texture, a canvas in the right
32:51
way, you know, and you say, okay, this brush mark is going to be here and we
32:54
wanted the paint to be actually be thick.
32:57
I don't know how you do all that with a one shot AI image.
33:01
I don't know how you get that texture quality in there.
33:04
I, I have a lot of questions about AI generated architecture.
33:07
I think we all do on multiple levels.
33:10
No one has a good answer.
33:11
Yeah.
33:12
But I could see it as a way for somebody starting out to use
33:16
it as a tool to help them maybe communicate what's in their head.
33:21
On to, let's say an eight and a half by 11.
33:24
I joke all the time, I'm not a graphic artist.
33:26
I have a hard time communicating to somebody what exactly I would
33:29
want to see on a canvas, but if I could mock it up in AI and then take
33:33
it to you and say, Bob, okay, so this is sort of what's in my brain.
33:36
Can you make a painting out of this?
33:38
That would be really cool.
33:39
Yeah, I think there would be a market for artists that would do that.
33:43
Sure.
33:43
I agree.
33:44
I think all art makes life.
33:47
It's like Kurt Vonnegut said, I got a Kurt Vonnegut quote in the beginning of the
33:52
book, which you read, and then there's one at the end of the book that says,
33:56
the arts are not a way to make a living.
33:59
They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
34:02
So I think if AI can generate some big murals in depressing locations.
34:08
I think that would be wonderful.
34:10
I don't know if we should put illusions on the sides of cars.
34:14
I think we call those liveries, Bob.
34:15
Yeah, but I get your point.
34:22
I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do this, but also there should
34:26
be, and there are a lot of different tools in an artist's toolbox, right.
34:30
Or, or on their palette, AI might just be another one.
34:33
It can be used for good and it can probably be used for evil too.
34:36
Right.
34:36
In this instance.
34:38
And I think that leads us into our next question, which is talking about
34:41
commissions and getting in line at the deli counter for some Bob Gillespie art.
34:45
So how do we acquire some of your art?
34:47
How does one purchase your pieces or go about getting something made?
34:51
I'm quite proud that I, uh, with the help of a friend, I've developed
34:55
a new website called glenspeed.
34:58
art.
34:59
Right now it's got about 30 of my most popular prints on it.
35:02
People can buy my artwork.
35:04
I signed a numbered print online.
35:07
Again, I'm a controlled freak.
35:08
I make my own prints.
35:10
I've got a 10 color printer.
35:12
I control the whole process and the quality of it.
35:15
And so, yes, people can buy my artwork or commission a painting through glenspeed.
35:21
art is my website.
35:23
We talked about, you know, how do you choose your next
35:26
painting, but what's next?
35:27
What are you working on?
35:28
Any spoilers?
35:29
Anything you can share?
35:31
I'm doing volume two of the Watkins Glen International Coloring Book.
35:35
I did a coloring book in 1998, and now It's been a few years and the Racetrack
35:40
would like me to do another one.
35:42
I'm working on that and then I'm going to work on the festival
35:46
poster for next year for the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Vintage Festival.
35:50
The theme is Porsche, so I'm excited about that.
35:53
A lot of other artists we've talked to Go to different car shows or events, or
35:58
they have viewings and things like that.
36:00
Do you have anything lined up in terms of where people can
36:02
come and see your art in person?
36:03
Well, they could go to the Franklin street gallery in Watkins Glen.
36:08
I'm just up the road.
36:09
They could stop by at my place if they wanted to see some artwork.
36:13
I'm happy to say that I'm fortunate to sell just about all of my artwork.
36:18
I have very little here at my house that I've done because I've,
36:21
I've sold just about all of it.
36:23
I've got a big old Victorian house and, uh, I work on big paintings
36:28
in certain rooms and small paintings at the kitchen table.
36:32
So I've painted in about every room in our house.
36:35
But yeah, Franklin Street, Mark and Glenn, it would be the place to
36:38
see a lot of my artwork for sale.
36:41
Well, Bob, we've reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests
36:44
to share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything else that
36:48
you'd that we haven't covered thus far.
36:49
I'd like to put out a big thank you to the International Motor Racing
36:53
Research Center for all the help they've been to me over the years.
36:57
Bill Green, Sports Car Club of America, which has been wonderful to me.
37:02
I'm a member of the Glenn Region Chapter, the people at Watkins
37:05
Glen Promotions, the people at the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce.
37:09
I'm very fortunate to have a lot of people that have encouraged me and given me an
37:14
opportunity to exhibit and sell my work.
37:18
Bob's book includes quotes that he chose to shed light on the creative process.
37:23
They were made by artists that he admires and unexpectedly his auto
37:27
racing paintings enabled him to befriend a generation of remarkable people
37:32
involved with American road racing.
37:34
Many of those are no longer with us, and their quotes are also included
37:37
and offer first person insights and perspectives on the sport.
37:41
Bob believes there is a shared state of mind between artists and race drivers.
37:45
Perhaps it's a reliance on intuition along with a constant striving for perfection.
37:50
If you'd like to pick up a copy of Bob's book, One Track Mind, The Art of
37:54
Bob Gillespie, you can log on to www.
37:56
glenspeed.
37:58
art to order a copy for yourself or someone you know that would enjoy
38:02
a wonderful book like this, too.
38:04
And with that, Bob, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break Fix again,
38:07
but this time sharing your passion for motorsports, enthusiasm, and art with us.
38:13
You are the living embodiment of why we do this show.
38:16
These are the kinds of stories we love.
38:18
You're the type of enthusiast that we all look up to going live
38:22
an incredible life, steeped and surrounded by motorsport, which is
38:26
something that we all aspire to do.
38:28
So Bob, thank you for what you've done for the community, for the world,
38:31
for everyone, and keep doing what you do best painting and drawing and
38:35
putting out some fantastic artwork.
38:36
Thank you so much, Eric.
38:38
I really appreciated the opportunity.
38:40
All this enthusiasm is just a wonderful thing for us to share with our feelings
38:46
about automobiles and history and racing.
38:50
It keeps us all young.
38:56
We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast, brought
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