Greig Leach

In art, rules are made to be broken. Several years ago I had set myself a rule of not using helicopter shots to base the watercolors off of, the theory being that I wanted it to seem as though I was painting from the back of a motorcycle. There was a slight chance of that actually happening once. Then once I started painting the 2014 Tour de France (and the ensuing book) I added doing only horizontal compositions to add consistency to the book layout. Well clearly this painting throws those ideas out. Blown away as much of the peloton was in the crosswinds across the farm fields south of Paris. The rule of thumb in mulitday stage race is you can't win the race in the opening stages, but you can sure lose it. So it was for many who missed the splits, some giving up minutes to those in the first to echelons.