The Immortal Horse

"Amoretto"

The Presence of Spirit

As I prepared to add the finishing touches to the portrait of Amoretto, I paused a moment to reflect on the photograph his person had sent me. She wasn't like most of my clients, with whom I have deep heartfelt conversations about their horse soul mate. She was more pragmatic about their relationship. She admitted that the photo didn’t really capture him and only gave me a fleeting description of his personality. She was very specific about wanting me to paint the portrait exactly like the photo, except she said that he had been tranquilized that morning so she asked if I could “add a little life” to his eye.

I always paint the horse’s eyes last. This is in part because the pastel chalk I work with produces a layer of dust that settles on the painting as I work, so the last layers are cleaner and crisper and more detailed. Intuitively I have always felt the body of the horse comes first, and then adding the eye allows the spirit to be present in this new pastel form.

So, who was this horse that I had never met? Behind his sleepy eyes I felt like he was an intelligent, gentle soul. The slight smile at the corner of his mouth and his attentive ears gave me the feeling that he had a wonderful sense of humor. I trusted my instincts. I began to draw his eye, adding a pastel highlight, then removing it and putting it down in a different place. I refined the shape and tilt of the brow, softened the lashes and then… a stillness inside me said… “that’s Amoretto”.

I shipped the pastel and waited eagerly to hear from my client to hear how she liked the portrait. A ripple of joy went through me when she called and her first words were, “I absolutely love it.” Then she said, “I am speechless, I don’t know how you were able to portray my horse’s personality so completely. The photo wasn’t truly like him at all, but you painted him as if you’ve known him all your life.”

I have always been curious how I can imbue a portrait with the spirit of a certain horse. Is it merely my artistic eye that picks up the imperceptible expression, the attitude underlying the pose? There is more to it than that. Time and again, my clients tell me the artwork is - their - horse.

Through the years of creating portraits, I have come to understand it is an intuitive process. The horse’s presence can reveal itself, even at a distance, even if I’ve never met them, but only when I give them my full attention. In the intimate exchange that happens in creating a portrait, when I am attuned to the fine details of physicality, it is like touching the horse with my artistic fingers. In the process of recreating those details, the presence and the spirit of the horse reveals itself.

This is the key to intuition... attention and presence. This is what horses invite us to embrace and embody; for only then can they share their true nature.

A Portrait of the Eternal Spirit

I was in the process of finishing the portrait, "My Eternal Dreams", for my client when her horse suddenly passed due to illness. The timing was such that I was scheduled to travel near where she lived, so we arranged to meet to unveil the portrait. Since the loss was so recent and so raw, neither of us knew how she would feel when I unveiled it. When I took the drape off, she stood silently for some time, then she said, "I expected to feel empty, but I feel filled."

"My Eternal Dreams"

I have come to understand that my portraits capture more than a likeness of a horse. They portray the essence, the spirit, of that being. Time and again, my clients tell me that the art gives them a way to bring the intangible nature of their love into focus in a way that defines it and acknowledges it. In the case of a horse that has passed away, the portrait becomes a portal to connect to their immortal spirit.

Photographs remind us of the past

Immortality is difficult to comprehend when we face the daily absence of our loved one’s physical presence, or we look at photographs that remind us of our lives together. When my mother was aging and in a nursing home, I found myself looking at photos of her when she was young and healthy. I grieved for the loss of the vital woman I had always known. As I worked through that grief, I realized that though the passage of time had changed her body and mind, her spirit remained the same. She was no less than she ever was, despite her appearance as an invalid in a wheelchair. I realized that the photographs were a false reality. When we look at photos, we are looking at moments that existed in the past. We are aware of the time when we took that “snapshot” in an attempt to preserve that moment. Photographs are always from the past, and since the present has changed, inevitably, no matter how beautiful they are, they evoke feelings of wishing we could be that way, how things were back then.

It is different when one experiences an artistic creation. In the process of creating a portrait of a horse, whether the horse is twenty miles away or on the other side, I am connecting with the eternal essence of that horse. With every stroke of my pastels, I depict the horse as if it exists in the present moment.  When perceiving the art, every moment becomes now.  So the image, in its way, is always alive. I paint what is, not what was. I portray the eternal essence, not the finite earthly experience.

Someday, we too shall pass on, and perhaps then the art itself becomes a legacy of our undying love. Each work of art is like a pastel prayer flag, rippling its energetic threads into the universe.