Fifteen years ago, a client asked Robin Schumacher of Porter Corners to repaint her lawn jockey in Clifton Park. Shortly after, a co-worker at her job in the sign shop for New York State Parks alerted her that he heard there was an opening to repaint the lawn jockeys at the New York State Racing Authority’s (NYRA) renowned Saratoga Race Course. It has long been a NYRA tradition that all the grade one stakes winners are represented by lawn jockeys painted to reflect the exact silks of the winning stables outside the Nelson Avenue Mary Lou Whitney gate. In addition, the Travers and, now Belmont, winners are featured in a garden inside the gate and are painted immediately after the race to match the winners.

Schumacher got the job at NYRA and it spun into an entire business of lawn jockeys in no time. That same year, Schumacher found aluminum jockeys for sale that were made in Mexico and painted one for Impressions, the now more than 45-year-old-specialty souvenir store on Broadway in Saratoga. It sold immediately and she now sells more than 50 painted lawn jockeys a year. They are still featured in the store today. Each jockey sells for between $850-$1,500 depending on the design. She is now known as the “Saratoga Jockey Painter” and will customize them with nearly anything a customer wants, including such complex things as company and sports team logos. The lawn jockeys have been welcoming symbols in front of homes since the 1800s and were often used as hitching posts. A few years ago, Schumacher was the first in the country to create a female lawn jockey statue and obtained a copyright for it in 2019.

Onsite at the Travers
While other artists also paint and sell the statues, it is Schumacher, age 68, who still spends every Travers Day (and Belmont Day) camped out at the racetrack in front of the Mary Lou Whitney entrance at Nelson Avenue. She arrives to claim her spot by 8:30 a.m. and sets up her chair and her art supplies for the day. She paints the winner right from the garden when the race is over.

“I spend the day watching and talking to all the people,” Schumacher said. “It’s an honor to be the artist that gets to keep this tradition alive.”

Early in the day, Schumacher receives a vinyl sign with the names and jockey silk colors of each stable who will participate in race. When the horses begin the race, she is watching on the nearest monitor and is as excited as anyone to watch who wins. It is then that her race begins, and she aims to paint the jockey as quick as she can. A project that would normally take nearly three hours, is accomplished in as quickly as an hour and a half.

“I always pray to God that a stable with easy silk pattern wins,” she said. “One year the silk design was so intricate I ran out of daylight trying to finish the job.”

Schumacher has fun while she is at it, posing for pictures with the winners and letting children hold the paint brush to pretend they are the painter. At the end of the season, she takes the 18 lawn jockeys that feature the winners from all the past year’s grade one stakes to her outdoor studio in Porter Corners to repaint them for the next season.

A lifetime as an artist
Schumacher has been passionate about art since she was four years old. She said her mom tried to dissuade her from trying to make a living as an artist, but somehow, that’s just exactly what she did.

She started making signs at the age of 14, painting a sign for a beauty parlor in her hometown of Corinth. At the time, Schumacher said, sign painting was a “man’s field,” but she learned by trial and error and learned to paint, airbrush, letter and even carve signs through high school and into her 20s.

She became a sign maker for New York State Parks in 1983. Initially she made the hand-painted wood signs but later moved to making digital metal signs at the parks. She held this position for 31 years, retiring in 2014.

A lost art that Schumacher keeps alive
While her lawn jockeys keep her plenty busy, Schumacher said her true passion is the “lost art” of gold leaf lettering on wooden boats. She works with two wooden boat manufacturers in the lower Adirondacks area, adding the registration, logo and name on the transom (the flat stern area) of the boat for customers. She has completed boat artwork for a few celebrities such as America’s Most Wanted television show host John Walsh, who named his boat “Wanted” and a boat for Donald Sutherland. One of the toughest projects she had, was to create an exact replica of the boat used in the movie “On Golden Pond.”

There’s no place like Greenfield
Schumacher lived in Greenfield until the age of 11, when her mom moved her and her four siblings to the village of Corinth. She moved back to Greenfield on Alpine Meadows Road in 2001 where she settled into a 28-acre homestead where she remains today. Schumacher has one daughter and two grandchildren.  She is now great-grandmother to five children in the Corinth and Luzerne area.

“I’ve lived around here my entire life,” she said. “It is a special, traditional town. I love all the community-building and fun we have seen in recent years.”

Just this past year, she has begun offering small private classes where she teaches people to paint their own lawn jockey for approximately $650.

“I’m actually surprised it is such a hit,” she said. “People have a great time sitting on a bucket, using my paints and creating their own masterpiece.”

Follow @Saratogajockeypainter on Facebook to learn about classes. Schumacher can be reached at 518-225-1188.

“We are proud that this accomplished part of Saratoga’s racetrack and the art community calls Greenfield home,” said Town Supervisor Kevin Veitch.