by Lita Makati –
Wallace Wyss, erstwhile artist for My Car Quest, says he’ll be showing art at a Ferrari event scheduled for May 5, in Pasadena, CA, which takes over two blocks of historic Colorado Boulevard, along the legendary Route 66. The event was held several years in the past as well, and up to 60 Ferraris are scheduled to be there.
“I’m going first as a historian and to write the story for the club but I’ll have on display some of my 100 prints and canvases,” says Wyss. He calls himself the “Accidental artist” because though he started college as an art major he got seduced into going into advertising as a copywriter and spent the next 30 plus years writing ads, brochures and then turned to car history, writing 18 books, one a best seller.
The accident of how he became an artist again was when he was preparing to go to the Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive show and stacked up some books to sell. But then thought why not make a portrait in oil of the man who stars in three of his books–Carroll Shelby. At the event, he sold a book to a booth holder and then showed him the picture of the painting. “Go get it,” the man said,”you sold that too.”
Wyss subsequently turned toward art and has since made over 100 original paintings, one of which is in a local museum. “I am going to try to have some art of SP cars, that is ‘Special Project’ Ferraris,” says Wyss. “It’s getting hard to keep track because they have so many of them.”
SP cars are generally only sold to the creme de la creme of Ferrari collectors. They sometimes have the initials of the private individual who first ordered them.
A list of Wyss works can be sent to those who write to malibucarart@gmail.com
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