The Wakefield Effect

(Before I begin, I hereby express my sincerest heartfelt apologies to the subject of this piece. I’d fully intended to make this report during the holidays, but it was not to be. I have no good excuse, and for that Alex, I apologize)

#meaculpa

Those of you who know me personally know that I’m not particularly shy and frankly a little hard to shut up at times….which is true.

That’s why an experience I had on an October evening was so notable. There were a few minutes where I was actually speechless, and a bit lost for words after that. Because this was such a rare event, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a little with you about this thing…this person who is what I consider pretty special, in a day and age where so few things are actually special.

So I’ve been following and chatting with a chap named Alex Wakefield on Facebook for a little while now. He’s my age (give or take a few) and we share a love for the wheeled arts. I really appreciate him because he’s snarky, he loves all kinds of racing and, well, I think he truly appreciated an ancient pic I sent him of me and Reinhold Joest.

But I digress….

Aside from being a gearhead, this guy has an excess of something I have none of…namely talent. I think I take a decent photo from time to time, but I’m not sure I’d really consider that a talent (I’ll call it an “ability,” and leave it at that). Finding one “keeper” photograph (out of a thousand duds), worthy of a little filtering, and posting on social media isn’t super noteworthy in my book. Alex, on the other hand, actually makes something, and I think he makes it quite well. What Alex makes is art. Not high tech digital renderings, and not stuff you’d want to swipe past quickly on some screen or other. He works in ink, paint, graphite, blood, sweat and…errr…gears.

Greg William Moore 4/22/1975 - 10/31/1999

In October of last year, Alex had a giveaway/contest for a small grouping of ink sketches that were a part of he called his Inktober Challenge. The Inktober Challenge was for interested parties to comment on one of the 6 sketches of open-wheeled racing’s modern greats (some of his his favorites) that he posted on his FB feed. 5 of the 6 were great choices, heavy hitters, but one I singled out above really got me right in guts. I shared my comments, as instructed, and we had a fantastic off-line chat about the subject of the piece, Greg Moore, and hell if I didn’t have a case of the warm and fuzzies for the rest of the evening.

So, if you also love racing, and you’d like to see more of his amazing work and maybe buy some for your walls, please check out Alex’s website here. He has a great body of work in motorsports and non-motorsports portraits and he also does commissions.

-Andrew