The Lead Mare

The Lead Mare is a pastel painting of my three horses in the pasture behind my farm house. The gray horse, the lead mare, is watching over two geldings—guarding them against danger, leading them to the best patches of grass, and calling them to return to the barn for meals. She is teaching me the language of horses.

This painting also taught me a lot about working with the pastel medium. I often prefer to work more loosely, but, in this work, I wanted to have more control over my goals, tools, and methods in order to achieve a particular vision. From the warm colors of the cheerful pastures in the foreground and behind the woods, to the cool colors of the moody woods where danger may lie, from the serious and alert attitude of the lead mare, to the relaxed postures of the “goofy geldings”, the scene tells a story about survival in the natural world. Somehow, I got it all in there. To the casual observer, it may be just another pretty painting of horses, but most viewers spend a longer time gazing.