Paint. Horse.

Paint Horse. Painting horse. Paint a horse. A painting horse. Oh my.


It sort of started one May 1st, my horse TigerLily's birthday. A couple of years ago I baked a special horsey cake for her - the recipe was from the author of 'Misty of Chincoteague' and I figured any cake good enough for Misty was good enough for TigerLily. The ingredients were supposedly a horse's dream come true: oats, carrots, molasses and apples. 


My son still guffaws at the memory of TigerLily daintily plucking the diminutive cake from my loving hand, and then bobbing her head several times like an iguana doing the primal territorial display before spitting it out directly at me in disgust. The barn dog, Fergie, did a remarkably well-timed fly-by and made off with it. (She came back and asked for more, bless her little omnivorous heart. You can always count on a dog to eat nearly anything). 


Anyway, since baking birthday cakes wasn't going to happen again, I resorted to other methods of celebrating. Being an artist, decorating my horse seemed like a good idea - it was the pink and orange livestock marking paint that wasn't. The dear forgiving man who owns the ranch down the road where TigerLily boards almost had a heart attack when he saw her, thinking that she was grievously wounded. I promised to only use non-gorey colors after that. 


TigerLily is a black and white Tobiano marked horse. What most people call a "paint", so painting designs on a paint horse has some extra linguistic appeal. I have also painted pictures of her.

(Funny thing - whenever I paint her, TigerLily is some shade of blue). 


And then there are paintings by horses. Often this is a rather gimmicky ordeal, with a handler coaxing a painting-like performance from a dutiful but baffled horse. And just as often the results are a predictable blend of mechanical smears and smudges of unfortunate colors using mediocre raw materials... 

Then there is Cheryl Ward and her painting horses. Holy smokes. 


I came across her website (http://paintinghorse.com) and I am completely smitten with her "collaborative interspecies" approach to painting in partnership with horses, and I am dazzled by their results, which truly are art. 

I am so inspired: Paint. Horse. And Human. 

(Stay tuned...)

And so it begins.

Actually, it began before I can consciously remember. All I know is that as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a horse.

As a child, this seemed a reasonable request. Perhaps, as some people grow up to be astronauts or movie stars, I would simply grow up to be a horse? The closest I could figure, as a kid, was that I would bide my time as an artist until then. It goes without saying that I'm still an artist. It's not, after all, such a bad second choice.

Now it must be said that there is a fundamental difference between 'wanting a horse' and 'wanting to be a horse'. The former is a common phenomena, particularly with girls of all ages. The latter is, if publicly announced, likely to land a girl in the looney bin. And yet the latter sentiment may go a long way in explaining why I struggle with riding: it doesn't quite make sense to me. I am, however, perfectly content to while away an entire afternoon, out in the field in the company of horses...