Painting Horse and Rider, Waiting to Ride, pastel painting

Waiting to Ride
© 2010 Karen F. Rose
pastel on board
On exhibit EQUUS The Art of the Horse
Cofrin Arts Center
Gainesville, FL

"My horse teaches me everything I need to know about myself." 

Not too long ago I watched a young lady as she was preparing to enter the show ring at a local equestrian event in Newberry, FL. She was focused. In her mind she was rehearsing each of the jumps she and her horse would make.

Communication between the rider and horse is so important as you approach a jump. And being a competition, the horse and rider are judged in just a few fleeting moments.

Capturing this young lady in her intensity, in the moment in pastel was my goal.

She was waiting, anxious but prepared and ready to ride.

I donated a painting called "In the Moment" to the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation's Noche de Gala Event at the Besilu Collection in Micanopy, FL. To see that painting, click on the tab "horse paintings" at the top of the page. 

That painting's focus was the beauty and intensity of the horse or better stated "the graceful athlete". 

Florida is horse country. All over the state you can enjoy watching many hunter/jumper, dressage and driving competitions and events. Lush beautiful horse farms with expansive pasture land dot the landscape. 

Are you a rider or is someone in your family? Would love to hear what you have learned about yourself from your horse.

Winston Churchill the painter

Winston Churchill (detail of painting)
by Douglas Chandor
at Smithsonian
photo credit © Karen F. Rose 

The Portrait Society of America organized a bus trip to the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington DC during the national conference in 2010 which I was lucky to attend. 

I was pleased to study a portrait of Winston Churchill I had never seen. (This is just a portion of the painting by Douglas Chandor)

Mr. Churchill was a painter himself. In the book Winston Churchill His Life as a Painter A Memoir by His Daughter Mary Soames, there is a touching story describing how Churchill during the war convinced President Roosevel that while in North Africa he must see the sun set over Marrakesh.

Roosevelt was carried up the stairs of a tower and "the two friends sat and watched the sun set in all its glory." Then in the next two days Winston Churchill, who had brought his paints with him painted, the scene. 

PBS has a wonderful clip about this http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/fdr_23_qt.html#v124