THE SURREY ADVERTISER Nov 2007
PIERCE’S VIRTUOSO INNINGS by Richard Spiller
Sit down at a cricket match and there is every chance that Christina Pierce will sketch you into her latest painting.
The Send-based artist includes a host of scenes in her Cricket Yearbook 2008, a limited edition of 2000 having been produced just in time to make wonderful presents.
Pierce is no stranger to cricket grounds, not least with her son Oskar Kolk having been skipper of Surrey’s title winning U10 side last summer.
She has been sketching scenes for several years and one of her best known paintings, “TWO TO WIN”, which features on the cover, was specially commissioned by Ashley Giles - a scion of Riple y- for his benefit fund last year. It shows him racing down the pitch with bat upraised after scoring the winning runs at Trent Bridge to put England ahead in the 2005 Ashes series.
Next year her work will be helping John Crawley’s funds and she has aided Guildford’s CHASE appeal.
But far from being just a coffee table art book, she has come up with a diary-each week-to-a-page is faced by a picture-which includes next summer’s international fixtures plus full information on every English county’s set up from first team to youth sides.“My father still coaches down in Cornwall and that’s how I first got involved” said Pierce. “There are so many interesting things to see and it is the ones around the edges which often interest me as much as the big scenes, like the old bloke in the corner collecting the tickets.
I like sitting down and sketching away when I get the chance. When you are focusing on one event, like Ashley Giles hitting those winning runs, you have to use photographs to help you but I like to go and look at a place and get as much of an idea as possible about it through my own eyes ideally”
Portraits of Brian Lara, Kevin Peiterson, Matthew Hoggard and others sit alongside keenly-observed and subtly coloured sketches such as the old style bowling boots hanging by their laces or a group of boys enjoying a colts night. Somerset’s Taunton ground and the Oval feature heavily.
Ripley, where Oskar has played for the colts, is much in evidence - not least is my favourite, “A Welcome Pint”, a pavilion summer balcony scene. You can almost taste it.