All Dressed Up, No Place to Go

Limited Edition Signed & Numbered Canvas Prints

This painting captures one of the most frustrating situations a jockey can find himself in. The field is turning for home, the horses are tightly bunched, and the riders behind the leaders are looking for one thing—a hole to open up.

A jockey can be sitting on plenty of horse at this point, knowing his mount has enough left to make a run, but it doesn't do him any good if there's nowhere to go. You're watching the horses in front of you, looking for the slightest opening and hoping it comes before you run out of racetrack. Sometimes the hole opens and you get through. Sometimes it doesn't. That's horse racing.

The title, All Dressed Up, No Place to Go, comes from a phrase race caller Danny Alameda would use when a jockey had plenty of horse underneath him but was trapped behind other horses with no place to run. I always thought it was a great expression, and it seemed like the perfect title for this painting.

I chose a close-cropped composition to put the viewer right into the action. The colorful jockey silks, horses packed tightly together, and the anticipation of the stretch run capture a part of racing that isn't always obvious from the grandstand—the split-second decisions being made by every jockey in the field.

2 sizes available of this print.     10 x 20"     375

                                                    18 x 36"     200

Each print comes with a certificate of authenticity