Two U.S. painters have qualified for the Paris games - Winthrop Alabaster IV (AlaBlaster) and Cordelia Sinclair (Brush Bitch) - and two spots remain.
Paris - For the first time in history, the Paris Games will feature competitive painting as an official Olympic sport.
"Paint will be flying, next level imaginations will be revealed, and athletes will be showcasing their insane brush skills," long time competitive painter and first time Olympic judge Robert "P-Slap" Birchmore explained. "People all over the world are going to get the chance to see "splatters", "stippling", "dabbing", "glazing", and even that thing where we use our fingernail to scratch the canvas in order to reveal a layer of paint underneath. And all while enjoying a glass of wine and an assortment of local cheeses!"
Competitive painting made its debut at the 2018 Fine Arts Showdown in Barcelona, where it drew a crowd of over several people, making it by far the most popular event that morning. The Olympics declared it a "thing we heard about it," and now both organizers and athletes hope to replicate that success on the largest stage in the world for sports.
"The Olympic games are a huge opportunity to educate people on competitive painting," United States Competitive Painting Association (USCPA) president Dudley Chaddington revealed. "We couldn't be happier that the sport is finally getting the recognition that has benefitted other recent additions to the Olympic program, like surfing, skateboarding, and extreme breastfeeding."
The addition of these sports is helping to reach a wider demographic, many of which are younger, more active on social media, and less likely to get excited about traditional Olympic track and field events, swimming, and that one where 12-year-old girls do flips. According to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, millions of children around the world are going to be inspired to pick up a paintbrush. "If we get this right, children will be looking at AlaBlaster and Brush Bitch as role models instead of people like Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is fine but, I mean, it's all a bit much if you ask me."
Competitive painting is as much an art as it is an athletic endeavor, and it is characterized by extreme concentration, steady footwork, and a variety of techniques that generally involve the application of paint to a blank canvas using a brush or maybe a palette knife. In Paris, the competition will be divided into two events - one for women and one for men - with 16 painters going brush-to-brush in a riveting group battle where each athlete has up to an hour to paint. There will also be music, probably something with a violin.
After the painting is done and all the brushes are cleaned and safely back in their vacuum-sealed composite steel carrying cases, judging can begin. Judges will be looking at a number of key performance and outcome variables when deciding the winner of each competition, such as standing footwork, canvas placement, and brush control, in addition to how much each painting transports them back to their childhood. According to Birchmore, who has judged more competitive painting battles than anyone else in history, there is a mix of both subjective and objective criteria. "You get a feel for it, the rhythm of mixing paint on the palette and each individual brushstroke. I would be lying if I said there wasn't an opportunity for some showboating with a few crowd-pleasing power strokes, like gradient blending, double and even triple loading, or the overhead thunder smudge."
I’m working on my thunder smudge. Will need to get the overhead perfected before 2028. Thanks for highlighting this important event!