We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Thomas Beasley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Thomas, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In 2022 I had access to the pit road and garage area during the August NASCAR race in Daytona. While I was there I did about 10-15 drawings from life of the cars being prepared before the race started, and some other interesting things I saw as well. After the weekend I went through photos I had taken while watching the race from pit road and made a series of digital paintings of different tasks crew members on the 9 car performed throughout the day. As an artist with a focus on motorsport there is a decent but not abundant amount of art made surrounding this topic, and what art there is tends to focus just on the cars and drivers. The reason this project was meaningful to me is it was the first time I had my art completely centered around the crew members, and I was able to show people that there is a whole world of unrecognized people on pit road putting in hours of work each weekend to get the cars race fans love on the track. Moving forward from this project I will do more illustrations of the crew members on race weekend, and over time have more names and faces be associated with racecars than just that of the drivers. Using art will be a great and unique way to bring attention to the unsung heroes of motorsports.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As most kids do I enjoyed drawing, but it was not until I was around 12 that I began to draw with the intention to improve my skills. I have a love for motorsports so that is what the primary focus of my art was then and still is now. A few years later while trying to see what other people’s car drawings online looked like, I found out that a few artists like Sam Bass had made a living solely off of drawing racecars. From that point on I became increasingly more interested in creating art for a living. Having just finished my education at Ringling College of Art and Design one aspect of my art that I have developed is my ability to draw from life. A big emphasis was put on the importance of developing this skill at Ringling, and I am grateful for it. While a lot of my art is poster work, recently I have been taking my sketchbook to every motorsport race I go to and drawing from life throughout the event. This is not something I have seen done much before by other artists, and it has added a tangible element to my art that immerses the viewer in a way that makes them feel like they were there on race day. I am proud of the progress I have made over the last decade with my art, and am looking forward to further developing my ability as well as finding new ways to present the sport that I love.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

What I find most rewarding about being an artist is the fact that it is a journey with no set endpoint. With art you are always developing your technical skills. You may have a medium you work in that you have mastered, but there is such a wide variety of ways to create art that you will never master them all. In a way that could seem overwhelming or depressing, but in my view it gives you something to work on for the rest your life. There will never be a point where you are fully satisfied with everything you make, yet at the same time there is always going to be something for you to create and that keeps life fresh and exciting. At the end of the day if you continue to create art and push yourself to improve over a long time period, your work will surpass what you used to think was your highest possible skill level and that to me is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My creative journey is quite literally driven by cars. I have an incredible passion and interest in motorsports of all kinds from around the world. The mission that I am on with my art is to be a bit of a documentarian, capturing moments in time from specific races. My sketchbook is like a picture book of the history of racing, and in particular I am making it a history book of the time I am around for. While I do love drawing the classic cars and drivers, a mission of my art is to be relevant to the time I am in because as someone that witness the races as they happen I know what the feeling of the fans at the time is, and I want my art to be able to provide a firsthand account of what the attitude and sentiment was of this era. Views will change over time, so by capturing the feeling of the present my art will provide a window into the past for future viewers that helps them understand why things were the way they were, and how it developed into what it becomes in the future.      

Contact Info:

• Instagram: TBCar_Art
• Facebook: Thomas Beasley Art
• Twitter: TBCar_Art

Image Credits
1 personal photo: Andrew Parenteau