Corby double Olympian creates five-metre portrait of rugby hero

Corby double Olympian, Brendan Reilly, has created a five-metre portrait of Scottish rugby hero Doddie Weir and hopes to use it to raise awareness of Motor Neurone Disease.

This is Brendan’s next big project, following his creation of a life-size portrait of Jesse Owens, which was shown in a London art gallery last year.

Brendan chose Doddie as his inspiration for this piece, following his tragic passing last year. Brendan was fortunate enough to meet Doddie on a number of occasions throughout his sporting career.

He said: “I met him a few times through random sporting dinners and he was very kind and helpful to me on my journey in sport, so I wanted to do this to try and repay this favour in a minor way and raise awareness of MND and maybe try and use it to raise money for his MND charity.”

When Brendan worked at a school in Harrogate a few years ago, he reached out to Doddie to ask him if he could send a video to help inspire the children, which he did.

Brendan said: "It was really nice of him to take the time out and do that to inspire the kids I was with, so it seemed appropriate that when he passed, that I’d try my hand at trying to do a portrait of him.”

The portrait is called ‘Mad Giraffe Rises Again’ and is supposed to show the solidarity and bond of the rugby world as the whole of the Six Nations props lift Doddie to the heavens above.

"It started off as a simple sporting picture of Doddie doing a line-out with his Scottish players supporting him and then it turned into all the players/props from the Six Nations supporting him so it became more of a symbolic piece.”

He hasn’t yet exactly decided how to use the painting to help raise awareness for MND but says he has reached out to My Name’5 Doddie, a charity started by Doddie that is driven to help fellow sufferers and seek ways to further research into this, as yet, incurable disease.

The portrait took Brendan around a year to complete, stealing time in the morning before school runs or on weekends before sunrise.

Brendan has also created a video in which he has animated the background of the portrait and added audio commentary from one of Doddie’s tries from his career.

Brendan’s next project is a five-metre tall portrait of basketball hero, Michael Jordan, but he says it will probably be another year before it’s completed.