Carling Jackson painting of U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson.Carling Jackson/Supplied
At the FIFA World Cup in 2022, Carling Jackson stood outside a stadium in Qatar to paint 14-foot murals that captured both the players and the mood. It was a milestone for the self-taught Vancouver artist. Some fans don’t just watch sports – like Jackson, they use their creative skills to celebrate athletes, teams and the game.
She isn’t just a fan but a former athlete herself. Jackson played soccer growing up, and was talented enough to get a scholarship to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Though injuries shortened her soccer career, Jackson found another passion in painting.
Her strong interest in social justice and human rights brought her to Rio de Janeiro in 2014. Prior to that year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the Street Child World Cup was held as an international soccer tournament and arts festival. She painted there, and made the shift from being an athlete to painting them and painting for them.
Jackson says her time as a high-performance athlete made it easier to tap into this niche. “I realized there was no one pioneering this space and I wanted to be the one to do it.”
In the past decade, she has done everything from paint live on field at a Vancouver Whitecaps soccer game, to paint commissioned pieces for more than 200 athletes (the first was for Amir Johnson, a former Toronto Raptor).
Dave Fried of Calgary has also combined his love of sports and art, in his case to carve out a career painting goalie masks for both players and collectors.
Fried is a tattoo artist too, as well as a goalie on a rec team. When he started to paint more professionally about 10 years ago, his early clients were goalies from local clubs. That changed when two of his clients – Adin Hill and Logan Thompson – made the NHL.
Calgary Flames goalie mask, painted by Dave Fried.Dave Fried/Supplied
“Once they go out in the world and start spreading the word, it’s a really small community,” says Fried.
He has painted masks for NHL goalies like Tristan Jarry, Cam Talbot, Frederik Anderson and Anton Forsberg. Fried’s workshop contains a bunch of NHL jerseys that he uses to cross-reference colours to ensure the masks match exactly. Even the backs of the mask can be personalized, with clients asking for small portraits of their kids or their dog’s paw print airbrushed onto the mask’s interior. “And this is just for them, because no one else really sees it.”
Like any artist, sports artists stand out with both their talent and their specialization. Tony Harris of Ottawa says golf courses offered a perfect outlet for his landscape art and made him a standout at golf shows.
“There would be booths for companies like Titleist and TaylorMade, and then there was me in the middle,” he says.
Harris, an avid golfer, has painted more than 250 signature holes of courses throughout Canada and the U.S., and has served as the official artist for the Canadian Open golf tournament. The winners have received one of his original paintings of the course.
“When the golf business allowed me to make a living as an artist, I started to be able to explore doing the thing that really got me going and that was painting athletes.”
Tony Harris painting of Bigwin Island Golf Club, Lake of Bays, Ontario.Tony Harris/Supplied
He has had commissions to paint the NHL’s 100 greatest players and the recipient of the league’s Ted Lindsay Award, and has also painted athletes ranging from Joe Montana to Ronaldinho.
For Jackson, being asked by professional athletes all over the world to capture their favourite moments remains a thrill. She says her own experience as a soccer player actually helps with her process. “I’ve applied many elements of being an athlete to being an artist, including visualization. When I see a picture, I paint it in my head completely.”
Right now, she’s doing pieces for 2024 Olympic 100-metre sprinting champion Noah Lyles, basketball player Kevin Porter Jr. of the Los Angeles Clippers, and Édouard Mendy, a soccer player with Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia.
“Those are three international players, three different sports. That’s my day-to-day. It’s crazy and I have to pinch myself that this is my life,” says Jackson.
