Touched By A Horse: QT's Portrait

I just wanted to take a moment and thank everybody for adopting my artwork for your homes or businesses last month! My horses love finding appreciating homes where folks dote on them....and they don't eat much! HA! LOL!! :)

Well... I finally was able to start working on this piece of QT for Melisa Pearce and her Touched By A Horse biz at good ole Lil Bit North Ranch. This is actually a side of QT I have never experienced except through the lens of my camera. He is often busy doing experiential round pen work with his clients. He is a great horse to use if people need to better their leadership, communication, and assertion skills. He just loves to run circles around them with his cute little nose rudely pointing away from them! To connect with QT you must first gain his respect.

QT has such amazing presence and energy. He certainly caught my eye the first time I saw him. Perhaps it is the look of eagles that he has in his eye.

Take good care and until next time.......
Susan
windhorseOne Studios

August

It is already well into the month of August and I can't believe how quickly this year has moved along! I haven't had much time or energy to any art work lately. I am surrounded by work that needs to ship to New Hampshire, Texas, Minnesota and locally from the shows I have been at but I took a little time to do some much needed work (for me!). This piece turned out to be a challenge and it took a bit of perseverance to get it to where I wanted it.

This is a portrait of August, a Canadian mare. I had never heard of the breed before I met Ingrid - the caretaker of my two boys. The Canadian Horse is a little known national treasure of Canada. This hardy breed descended from horses originally sent to the “New World” by King Louis XIV of France in the late 1600’s. These Norman and Breton horses were felt to be of Arab, Andalusian and Barb ancestry – traits of which can still be recognized in the Canadian Horse today.

There is quite an unusual lot at Ingrid's with this Canadian and her colt Echo plus the Peruvian Pasos and then my Friesian/colt crosses.

August is the alpha of the group and has quite a mind of her own! She is often standing near the gate gazing towards the house door or towards the forest. She is a horse who demands and commands respect.

I am glad to be home now for a while with no shows until mid-September! I have become enamored with a buckskin Friesian/paint filly in San Antonio. She is half sister to one of my boys and I can't seem to get her out of my mind..........Perhaps more on that later!

Have a super weekend!
Susan
windhorseOne Studios

Touched By A Horse Workshop & Melisa Pearce

This weekend I participated in an Intuitive Awareness workshop at Melisa Pearce's Lil Bit North Ranch in Niwot Colorado. I recently met Melisa who founded Touched By A Horse; programs inspired by relationships with horses combined with her background in psychotherapy. The programs integrate time with horses and also deep personal exploration. Melisa is one of the ten authors in the Horse as Teacher book which is how we met. Check out her wonderful website at www.touchedbyahorse.com.

As we all know, horses are highly intuitive creatures and rely heavily on their senses for self preservation. While we humans have intuition, we rarely trust or listen to it! One of the fascinating aspects of this weekends workshop was being able to watch the horse/human dynamics and how the same horse related to different people. I will be returning later in the week to photograph a participants horse and also some of Melisa's amazing animals. She loves Paints and has a three time World champ. This woman is amazing and does it all!

Melisa also graciously allowed me to bring some of my work to show and sell to the participants. It gave people an opportunity to bring home a horse they identified with that would help them savor and warmly remember the event. Thank you Melisa for your generosity!

I felt the image above is a good representation for this blog. There is somewhat of a mystical and contemplative quality to it. After seeing so many women's hearts being "touched by a horse", who said horses aren't mystics!!!

Yours in the dance,
Susan
windhorseOne Studios
www.windhorseone.com

More on Relationships

Well we all know good relationships depend on communication and it appears that these two are indeed communicating. While we know horses don't speak in human language they sure have a language of their own!

These two seem very at peace with each other and there certainly is a yin and yang effect with the black and the white.

I sent off five images tonight with the hopes that one of them will work for the project. Keep your fingers crossed!

"Horses speak in silence, never forgetting to listen." Carolyn Resnick

Same Image - Two Workups

I am working on a couple of pieces for a juried B&W photography competition and the deadline is this Friday! After checking out the previous years winners it was apparent that they seem to like contrasty images. To achieve this you need to have a true black in your image and almost 100% white. This is tricky because you don't want to have your highlights blown out and losing the details. That means they want to see all the little hairs in the white mane and also the subtle detail in the shadows.

The upper picture is close to finished. The lower picture was also worked up in B&W but sepia toned to get the brown color. I left the pink in his muzzle while accentuating the blue gray. I think I like this workup better but unfortunately the contest is traditional B&W!

Back from New Mexico and Arizona

Where do I start? Today was a long road trip from Durango to Morrison but the scenery was glorious! It is too early to go to sleep and I am too tired to read and I had no idea how I wanted to return to blogging. After a nine day road trip into New Mexico and Arizona I have returned weary but quite content.

This piece is a bit of a departure for me and I am not sure how I feel about it. I don't normally choose to work on pieces that have so many horses in such close proximity.

I started working on it a while ago and I am not certain if it is finished but I wanted to post it as a tribute to my road trip and New Mexico artist John Farnsworth. He paints amazing oils of horses on larger than life-size canvases and there are always many horse heads close together. It was a pleasure to visit his gallery in Taos which made me think and dream that one day maybe I will have my own gallery too! Not to mention giving me the inspiration to post this piece.

Susan
windhorseOne Studios
www.windhorseone.com

The Fratsters

If horses could speak what do you think these two would be saying? This photograph is quite comical and during the process of photographing I did not even see it through the lens as it was happening! One of the things that is so special about photographing horses is that they are so animated and full of expression that you can never be sure about what you will have recorded until you get home!

One colt is nine months and the other is ten months. They are not even related, and really look nothing alike, but yet they almost look the same in this image. They were born on the same farm and they while their personalities are at the opposite ends of the spectrum they are connected in a really special way.

I have been busy collecting imagery of these two special boys and hope to put together a children's book or two. For some strange reason I am finding it more challenging to achieve the results I want and I am not sure if it is because I know these two intimately and perhaps have higher expectations from myself. Something to think about :)

Best,
Susan
windhorseOne Studios
www.windhorseone.com