Motorsport-Artwork

I was born in Switzerland on Christmas Day 1961.

At the age of 11, I had the chance to meet Emerson Fittipaldi, the reigning F1 world champion, who lived in Lonay (at that time).

One Sunday afternoon in 1973, while I was playing in the room of one of her two daughters who had invited me for the afternoon, Dr. Marlyse Norris came in and said: 'Come on Steve, I want you to meet [Removed]'

She brought me into the living room where a couple was standing and said: 'I would like to introduce you to Emerson Fittipaldi, Formula 1 World Champion'. The man held out his hand to me, so I offered him mine (as I had been taught) and said: 'Hello M[Removed]?'

As I was saluting his wife, Marlyse who was Emerson Fittipaldi's (and Jackie Stewart's) personal doctor translated what I had asked, and they all laughed, after which Emerson (probably amazed that a boy of my age didn't even know what Formula 1 was) invited me to sit down for a while to educate me on the subject, Marlyse taking care of the translations.

From that day on, I became more interested in Formula 1 and started to watch races, as I also knew one of the players. Emerson regularly gave me little gifts, through Marlyse, like a little 'Marlboro' radio, shaped like a pack of cigarettes, or a full series of stickers, for all races of the 1974 championship, as Emerson was racing for the 'McLaren' team, sponsored by Philip Morris, whose European headquarters were at Avenue d'Ouchy in Lausanne (the building where I found myself on September 11, 2001, the day of the World Trade Center attack, on my first day of work for a new consulting mission at Philip Morris Europe).

In 1981, Emerson stopped racing to become manager of an F1 team called 'Copersucar' and my interest declined, until the arrival of Ayrton Senna, but that's another incredible [Removed]

I started taking pictures of F1 in 2001, from the stands of the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, with the very first digital camera from Canon, with a resolution of only 3 Megapixels, and a big 500mm lens. Already proficient with Photoshop, which I had been working with for almost 10 years, I started to create digital paintings out of my own photos, and to redraw drivers' faces, in order to create digital artwork that I proposed and sold to different contacts in the area, especially karting tracks.

In 2003, I managed to enter the F1 Paddock of Magny-Cours, on the personal invitation of André Calantzopoulos, the CEO of Philip Morris, to take pictures of the drivers (to complete my artwork). Mauricio Arrivabene, Marketing Manager of Philip Morris at the time, was in charge of getting me into the Paddock and making sure my day went well. For the record, he would later become Team Principal of the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One Team from 2015 to 2018.

Thanks to my F1 photos, I had the opportunity at the end of 2004 in Valencia (Spain) to take pictures for the FIM (International Motorcycle Federation), where I discovered the world of MotoGP (which I only knew by name) and for which I quickly became passionate, to the point of neglecting F1, which had become quite boring in comparison.

With time, I created a lot of artworks that several riders kindly accepted to sign (which was almost impossible with most F1 riders, much more self-sufficient than famous MotoGP riders) and sold directly on my own website many of my creations.

With time, I improved my drawing skills, and nowadays my artwork is based on a mix of Illustrator & Photoshop skills: redraws are done with Illustrator, while all bitmap-related effects & final rendering are done with Photoshop.

If you like my artwork but would like me to create one just for you, it is, of course, possible but it will be more expensive as I will create it just for you, without the possibility to sell it to other [Removed], contact me directly by e-mail, with the picture(s) to use as a reference for your dedicated artwork.

Otherwise, enjoy your visit. Kind regards.

Steve Medina