Olympic Games Sport Painting – Nicholas Stedman

Oil Painting of Olympic Athletes in Motion (Polyptych, 2023)

Olympic Games sport painting by Nicholas Stedman – 16-panel oil polyptych of Olympic athletes in motion, including diving, high jump, shot put, and sprinting

Oil on canvas, 168 x 146 cm – Click the image to continue to the next painting

This sixteen-panel polyptych is rooted in a study of athletic movement drawn from broadcast stills. Four Olympic disciplines form its structural spine: Yang Jian’s 10-metre dive, Mariya Lasitskene’s high-jump technique, Ryan Crouser’s shot-put release, and a sequence of Usain Bolt’s sprinting frames. Each action is broken down and re-assembled as a visual score across the panels, translating time, tension, and release into a spatial rhythm.

The palette connects the work to the Greek origins of the Games through the ancient concept of the four elements: earth (γῆ), water (ὕδωρ), air (ἀήρ), and fire (πῦρ). The shot-putter carries the greys of earth; the diver moves through the blues of water; the jumper is suspended in the yellows and whites of air; and the sprinter ignites the reds and oranges of fire. These colour fields are not backgrounds but atmospheres, shaping the physical and emotional charge of each event.

All hues were mixed in my Palermo studio, guided by digital stills and by sketches developed with dancers and athletes. The work is oil on canvas, assembled from sixteen independent panels totalling 168 × 146 cm. Rapid underpainting and transparent glazes preserve the immediacy of the source images while allowing for the slower, accumulative time of oil.

A previous version of this composition can be seen in my earlier work, the second Olympic painting. This older painting was featured on the cover of Sports-et-Vie in anticipation of the 2024 Paris Olympics, documented on Orbitals27.html for a detailed report of the cover, and can be viewed or purchased online here on the magazine website.

This painting is available for purchase via SaatchiArt.

For studio visits, acquisition details, or high-resolution images, please contact me via the contact page.