Baseball cards get new takes by artists
turnedagent Jarred Fayson led to Jamieson’s current focus on sports portraits, as Fayson suggested Jamieson paint his clients’ portraits. That led to commissions by other athletes such as Drew Brees and Terrell Owens and an offer by Topps to be an artist for its Project 2020 series, the predecessor to Project70 that involved 20 artists recreating 20 classic Topps baseball rookie cards.
Jeff Heckman, Topps’ global director of new business ventures, first saw Jamieson’s work posted in the social media feeds of entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and professional lacrosse player Paul Rabil.
“I was impressed by the realism of his portraits of athletes and thought his style was perfect for what we were looking for,” Heckman says.
Between Project 2020 and Project70, Jamieson did a set of artist cards in which he riffed on the Topps 1951 series and included current and retired players, as well as a fun selfportrait with the tagline that read: “Pretty good at painting. Pretty bad at baseball.”
“I’ve got a stack of those now on my desk, and it’s one of those bucket list things,” he admits, with a chuckle. “Now I can say, ‘All right, I’ve got my own baseball card!’ ”