Charlotte Mullins comments on

Festival Fever

IT’S a beautiful day as horses thunder around the racecourse at Cheltenham. They are tightly bunched behind the leader, whose jockey stands taut in blue and yellow chevrons, tucked head showing a star crowning the silk. The composition is dynamic, as if the horses are being propelled along by the thrusting yellow diagonals of the Princess Royal Stand. Leila Barton painted Festival

Fever after spending a year studying racehorses as they were groomed for races such as this one. She observed them on the gallops and at the Cheltenham Festival, completing two commissioned paintings for the racecourse. She is now a committed fan of horse racing, admitting that her ‘heart and imagination have been captured by a whole new visual world’. She paints this enthusiasm directly into her spirited scenes, as if the energetic brushstrokes that make up grass and sky are urging the riders on.

Mrs Barton initially studied Art History and English at the University of Nottingham, only moving into painting at the age of 25. She then embarked on another four years of study at Chelsea College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, before graduating with a Masters in Fine Art.

She paints characterful portraits of children, sun-drenched palm trees and flower studies, but it is her equine scenes that are most assured. ‘All the things I love in painting landscapes, portraits and still lifes [are] brought together in one,’ she says. ‘Portraits of majestic, powerful horses, the detail of vibrant, patterned silks and the unique landscape character of each racecourse.’