Where ART Lives Magazine Volume 1 Number 3 | Page 84

Well Played

A very special commission by CFAI Member Jeanne Illenye

“Well Played” by JEANNE ILLENYE
With the baseball season currently in full swing, I thought it apropos to share with
you a particularly fun painting from a very special client, the Major League Baseball Commission. It was such an honor when I was the artist chosen to create a
corporate retirement gift for long time great, Allan H. “Bud” Selig, MLB
Commissioner for 22 years.
I could barely contain my excitement, even though I’d only ever been to a Major
League Baseball game a couple of times in New York City at the old Shea Stadium
with my husband, a diehard Mets fan, as well as seeing a game at the old park in
Cooperstown, New York when I was just a child. I recalled that it wasn’t the first
time in recent years that I’d been approached by a corporation regarding my baseball paintings. Previously, the publisher of famed American journalist and novelist
Ji m Lehrer included one of my paintings in the cover design of Jim Lehrer’s novel,
“Oh, Johnny”.
So the plan was set, contract executed, then the arrival of two official baseballs
with Bud Selig’s signature. One was in a classic display cube for posterity and the
other which was even more thrilling to me, was well worn from the game. Imagine, I held in my hand an official baseball that was actually in play...flown across
home plate at speeds of 95 mph, cracked against the powerful swing of a bat, and
sunk deep into a glove at first base! Oh, I could almost hear the roaring cheers...
and yet there it was before me in my studio, silently resting on my lap in the gentle
grasp of one hand, paintbrush in the other.

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