 | I recently discovered the world of Model Horses and jumped right into an Art Form I had always wanted to do. Unlike flatwork, the three dimensionality of the sculptured horses is hands on and exciting. I can breathe new life into a form of still beauty, a nonpliable object. Between working with resin and paintwork, the model horses seem to come alive! It's a well known understanding of some Model Horse afficionados that at Midnight, when all is quiet, and the occupants of the house are settled into sleep, our model horses begin to stir and neigh, cavort around the rooms in a wonderful display of humor, a grand joke on their makers. When I was a child, I actually thought my porcelain Japan horses did that sort of thing and was happily surprised to meet other Model Horse artists who thought the same thing. |
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My father, interestingly enough, stimulated my artistic talents. He was raised on a farm on the North Shore of Boston. He would tell me homespun stories of how he and his brothers and sisters would ride their horses bareback through the acres of farmland. He told me about the personalities of the horses the family had owned, and all their names. Bessie was the mare, and lived to a ripe old age. In those days, the horses would pull the plows, as it was around the turn of the Twentieth Century, in the early 1900's when my Dad was a boy. And while he would spin his yarns, he would guide my childish hand into creating a rather stick-figured horse. And I was lost in a world of fantasia. The horse was the first creature I ever learned how to draw. My youthful school notebooks are full of them, dancing through the pages. Well through College, I was still drawing horses in my school notebooks while my professors droned on. It was not until Art School that I put my horses aside in order to paint Still Lifes, Nudes, and Landscapes. I took that a step further and opened up my own worlds of fantasy and called them "DreamScapes".
My favorite horse models to work on are Fantasy creatures, bold Pegasi and delicate Arabian Unicorns. I also paint stories into the coats of my Custom Breyer horses, stories of strange realms and dark eerie tails of wars and romance. They are colorful and daring, and meld together into tapestries of forms and personas throughout the horse's coat. These are my Storytellers, my Tail-bearers, and all have different names and stories to tell.
Each horse is different, has a different story to tell. The colors conform to the essential atmospheres in which the stories unfold. And my flatwork is starting to involve horses, Flying horses, Horses galloping through storm-ridden waters in Dreamscapes of the imagination.
I am also working on developing a line of 'realistically' painted Horse Models, Dappled, Rose Grays, Pintos, Palominos etc. Yet I find that my fascination rests with the Fantastical.
Possibly I will develop a fantastical realistic Horse. In time, with work, the horses will come through my hands and begin to 'breathe' on their own. And I will touch the fine art of creation."
~Kathleen Ward-Salem Massachusetts