Presence

I painted this 30x40 oil on gallery-wrapped canvas as I was transitioning between series. I had been working on Equine Spirit paintings - somewhat abstracted/fantasy/dream images of horses that had more to do with capturing the essence of equine rather than literal interpretation. I was moving into (although I didn't realize it at the time) my totem animal series.

In this piece I really tried to suspend my own idea of what the painting should be and let the horses guide me. The thing I kept thinking about was the very subtle way horses communicate with each other - the position of an ear, a swish of a tail, an almost imperceptible shift in weight. To the untrained eyes, this small band of horses may seem to be completely at rest, unaware. But if you look at their ears, you can see as a group they are listening to each other and to sounds from the woods beyond. And they are aware of the viewer.

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