The Olympic Rings Series
Bradstock Debuts World’s First “Olympism Art Genre” Exhibition at 2025 ArtPrize; Unveils Collaborative Work “LA Rising Together”
Grand Rapids, MI — 2025 — Olympic artist Roald Bradstock made history at the 2025 ArtPrize festival with the debut of the world’s first exhibition dedicated to the emerging “Olympism Art Genre”, highlighted by an ambitious, community-built artwork titled “LA Rising Together”.
Bradstock, who lived in Los Angeles from 1986 to 1992 while training and coaching at UCLA, was deeply affected by the 2025 LA wildfires. With close ties to the region, he turned to art as a way to transform anxiety into action.
“I felt helpless watching it happen from a distance,” Bradstock said. “Creating this work became a way to turn something destructive into something meaningful.”
The original work, “LA Rising”, is a massive 10-panel charcoal drawing created over three months. Bradstock chose charcoal (burned wood) on paper (wood pulp) as a literal and symbolic reference to fire, loss, and regeneration.
At its center is the iconic Olympic 5-ring symbol, encircled by 2,028 rings representing the upcoming Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Installed as the signature piece of the exhibition, the artwork became a participatory installation during the 17-day festival. More than 1,000 visitors from across the Grand Rapids community added colored-pencil markings to the dark charcoal surface, symbolically adding light, color, and hope.
The completed work renamed “LA Rising Together,” embodies the principles of the Olympism Art Genre: unity, creativity, participation, and social connection through sport.
“This piece represents one community reaching out to another,” Bradstock said. “It became a message of support from Grand Rapids to Los Angeles.”
“LA Rising Together” stands as both a landmark in Bradstock’s career and a milestone in the development of the Olympism Art Genre, a movement merging sport, art, and community engagement.
Slide over or touch to see completed image
Together
Bradstock Unveils “Together,” a Collaborative 7th Olympic Ring Painting Celebrating 100 Years of the Winter Games
Olympic artist Roald Bradstock has unveiled “Together,” a monumental 24-panel acrylic mural that honors the centennial of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. The work marks the latest evolution of Bradstock’s pioneering practice within the emerging Olympism Art Genre, and stands as his 7th Olympic Ring painting.
Measuring 80” x 120” and consisting of 24 canvases, “Together” celebrates every winter sport from both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The sports, host cities, host nations, Olympic and Paralympic values, mottos, and founders are painted throughout the work, along with the flags of every country to host the Winter Games.
A defining feature of the project is its collaborative final phase. In the penultimate step, Bradstock drew 2.5 km (1.5 miles) of lines across the painting to create a precise 184,240-square grid. Using the grid as a guide, 100 high school students added color, symbols, and text to the work, including their own names and the names of 57 Winter Olympians and Paralympians from Lake Placid and the surrounding North Country region.
The resulting mural transforms a detailed historical tribute into a living, participatory artwork—reflecting the core principles of the Olympism Art Genre: unity, community engagement, creativity, and education through sport.
“Together” was created as part of the first-ever Art-in-Sport educational school program, an initiative that introduced students to the history, culture, and values of the Olympic and Paralympic movements through hands-on artistic collaboration.
Symbols On Ice
To celebrate the Art of the Olympians (AOTO) and Al Oerter Foundation’s (AOF) new partnership with the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) I wanted to create a new Olympic Rings inspired painting. This acrylic 36” x 60” painting called “Symbols on Ice” includes two sets of Olympic Rings – to represent the 1980 and 1932 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid. The four legacy sites and their respective symbols/logos are also embedded into the piece along with ORDA’s and AOF/AOTO’s logos. The overall design for this painting is an aerial view of the 1980 Lake Placid hockey ice rink where USA beat the USSR to win Olympic Gold.
Struggle for Perfection
Twenty 25 years ago this month – November 1997 – l painted my first Olympic Rings painting called “Struggle for Perfection”. Two years later, that very same painting won the United States Sports Academy /United States Olympic Committee Sport Art Competition and went on to represent the USA in a International exhibition in Lausanne in 2000 at the IOC museum, as part of the 2000 Sydney Olympics cultural events. This accomplishment led to the “The Olympic Picasso” media nickname (CNN interview).
2012 Rings
My second Olympic Rings painting was done in the build up to the 2012 London Olympic & Paralympic Games ( Title: “2012 Rings” ) when I was working for the British government as an Olympic Sports Art Ambassador (BBC interview/article).
Olympic Art Project
The third Olympic Rings painting was a 15 panel collaborative piece I did with 111 other Olympians (an unofficial world record) for the 2018 Olympic Art Project at the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang – some of the other Olympians included IOC President Bach, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco and WOA President Joel Bouzou. (IOC article 1) (video) (2018 Pyeongchang OLYMPIC GAMES)
Olympic Strong
The fourth Olympic Rings piece was one of the paintings I did for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Agora project ( Title “Olympic Strong” ). IOC article / Olympic Museum Instagram / “Olympic Strong – Time Lapse”
Paris 2.024 – Together
While my media nickname is “The Olympic Picasso” it is actually French artists, for the most part, that have had the most influence on my art.
To celebrates the 25-year anniversary of my first Olympic Rings painting l decided to create another one, my fifth to be exact, in this on-going series.
I think of this Olympic Ring series a little like Claude Monet’s Haystacks and Cathedral paintings that are painted at different times of the day and year so they capture a different feeling of light, color and temperature. For me, the Olympic Rings series is capturing me at moments in time on my continuing Olympic journey.
This latest work, called “Paris 2.024 /Together”, is a celebration of my Olympic journey and the summer Olympics Games in Paris in 2 years. It pays homage to French artists Henri Matisse and Georges Seurat as well of course to Pierre de Coubertin and the Olympic Rings logo he designed that is now one of the most recognized symbols in the world. The paper collage measures 60” H x 100” W pays tribute to Matisse’s paper cut outs and his “drawing with scissors” technique. I’ve taken his technique one step further though to “drawing with a knife” as I used an X-act.0 knife for all the cutting. Also, I did not use any glue. I developed a new collaging technique to create this work where I use only tape to attach the paper together – everything is attached from behind. I used over 1200 feet of masking tape to make this artwork.
In tribute to Seurat and his pioneering Neo-Impressionist Pointillism technique I broke down the Olympic Ring image into 24,000* coloured paper squares. *( 24,000 is a reference to the 24 in 2024). I took Seurat’s idea of using points of colour to create other colours and instead created coloured pixels and shapes that when optically over lap change colour and create the illusion of becoming solid, translucent or even transparent.
The collage uses 206 different coloured papers and has all 206 National Olympic Committee logos embedded throughout, sprinkled like dots of light as in Renoir’s “Dance at the Moulin de la Galette” painting.
One of my goals with this piece was to capture effort, time, passion – things that are hard to if not impossible to quantify.
l expand on the symbolism of the Olympic Rings with this piece and play with contrasts and contradictions:.
The medium for this piece is “Old School” / traditional if you will – It’s just bits of colored paper. The main image – the rings – is also “Old” but the way it has been constructed is new. The huge field of tens of thousands of coloured pixels give it a playful Lego feel but also a digital quality due to the QR code shapes and QR inspired images throughout the piece.
The goal and hopefully the result is an image that acknowledges the past, recognizes the present and looks to the future.
* Repetition of shapes, lines and colors, in all my work are in reference to being an athlete and what athletes do to reach their potential: repeat exercises, and movements to become stronger, faster, more flexible and more proficient at their chosen sport.
The 60” X 100”, 24,000 square paper collage is comprised of ten 30” X 20” panels, so the work can be displayed one of two ways:
1. They can be physically or digitally joined together to form a single image.
2. They can be physically or digitally displayed separately to form 10 images that connect to reveal the Olympic Rings
View this post on Instagram
