Excerpt

Gallery of Paintings

The artist creates in the form of a series of artful representations, with line as the functioning method of creativity. The result is an art project filled with emotion, plot, character, theme, style and tone. Story becomes the mode of the mind and art becomes the language. The use of horses within our creative process may allow students to invent and voice their imaginings.

From the early beginnings of time, the human has created the form of the horse as a function of the human capacity to reach out. Form, therefore, is a language.

Paradoxically, horse form then becomes a language. We promote art about horses and the land that they live on as forms to speak to others in a visual language. We invite the reader to use the blank pages of this text to draw and paint.


Drawing and Painting Horses

Following are some samples and blank pages concerning horses in art. Even in ancient times artists favored horses in many works, and today, horses of all breeds make great subjects. They remind us of freedom and open land and air and the very principles America was founded upon. Listen to the wind and the breeze around you, and the echoes of horses past and present will warm your heart and open your mind.


Writing

Variation, a compositional technique borrowed from music, aims at creating artistic order through the exploitation and development of a theme or motif. Variations became a preferred form of musical composition at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They were later taken up by Beethoven, who added the possibility of transforming the themes.

Literature, especially the twentieth-century novel, uses variations. The whole set of variations found within a work defines the identity of the chosen theme.


(From “The Horse Prophet, Pennsylvania Voices, Book I”)

Four hundred snows after the first prehistoric artifact lay upon the earth in a region called North America, the antiquity tribe of Nez Perce were the gentry of the Pacific Northwest. Calmly, the path of the first generations grew, changed, fled and disappeared. But their influence, the artifacts, would remain. It is that very gift of the earth which saved a special stone, a bright but small piece imbedded with the bone of a horse prophet that traveled with the package of a cedar tree sent to cheer a man dying of cancer, that would provide the voice and spirit to tell this tale. Beyond mere animal behavior and physical existence, horses possess the wisdom of all generations, follow the law of the herd and soothe those who listen. They listen to the wind and if you quietly wait, you can hear the wind, too.

Moonlight rays swept over the waves and hit the black rocks near the shore. When the sun rose, its light flickered across the water and the rocks became azure reflections of the ocean’s blue. The townspeople called this place Rocky Winds, for the winds blew consistently and endlessly over the sand and rocks. Shells flickered in the light and gulls flew low overhead. Here the wind, the sea, the people and the land were one.

The sun had just risen as my friend, Allison, glanced out the van window at this modest community and the lighthouse that was to be her new home. When her mother stopped for a couple minutes to enjoy the scenery, Allison walked nearby and picked up a bright stone that caught her eye.

Seated again in the vehicle, she listened to the wind whistle through the slightly opened window. The black of the rocks turned to azure as the sun rose higher in the sky and the water reflected the light of the new day. Allison’s pink shirt glowed brightly through the glass. While examining the stone Allison felt it call to her, so she placed it in the right pocket of her pants. The wind howled.

She looked away from the lighthouse, to her mother’s beautiful blonde hair. Elaine Grey’s firm grip on the wheel betrayed a mother’s anxiousness as she steered the van along the small gravel road in search of their driveway. Allison and Elaine Grey were like gentle deer, with light hair and green eyes. Both had long, lean figures and delicate movements. Their faces were thin and their eyes wide and bright. Allison had turned twelve just yesterday.

Mrs. Grey steered the van carefully. “Look at the view, Allison,” she said. “I think we’ll have a wonderful life here.”

Allison smiled back, saying, “Dad wanted us to have a new beginning, and here we are!”

“I think your dad will love the sea air and the view,” Elaine replied as she glanced up the hill at the hospital where her husband stayed.

The lighthouse sat in spectacular view of the whole area, with part of the town uphill and the sea downhill from the historic structure that was to be their new home. Allison’s dad, recently taken ill with cancer, had requested a transfer to this hospital near the sea where he had lived as a child.

A strong, tall figure of a man, Allison’s dad had never been ill until the cancer struck, and then he quickly planned his treatment and the care of his two beloved women, his wife and his daughter.

So here they were. Moving into a great adventure, managing and living in the lighthouse, giving tours and running the gift shop.

The land stretched far, like an endless river of sand and grass joining the sea and the lighthouse. The ribbon of road to the lighthouse seemed like a cobblestone path from long ago. The van rocked back and forth over the uneven gravel and shook when it stopped in the driveway. Giant swirls of fall mums—pink, orange and yellow—stretched along the driveway like clouds up to the heavens, encircling the lighthouse in an embrace of color. The wind blew the sea grasses in waves towards the water, and the azure rocks glistened below.