Artist Statement
Announcing: new series of striking, large-scale charcoal portraits celebrating the brave and stoic horses who served a nation. Each of the twelve drawings will be accompanied by a recounting of the horse’s unique personal story.
A pamphlet with additional information on horses in the Civil War serves as a key element of this ambitious project interconnecting art, individuals, war and courage.
Statement:
"There is many a war-horse who is more entitled to immortality than the man who rides him." -- General Robert E. Lee
These portraits of courageous horses were conceived as a large-scale exhibition meant to convey physicality, and just as importantly to provoke an intimate conversation between history, human, and horse -- a cross-species dialog about the nature of struggle, fear, and grace.
My portraits of real individuals, accompanied by their unique biographies , speak to multiple stories of amazing survival and spirit, from which we have much to learn. Forever silent, yet their images and actions are haunting.
As a whole, my portraits ask questions about morality, celebrity, and history; as they address issues of heroics, ownership, and the inter-relationship of humans and animals. The exhibition's emphasis is the exceptional nature of these horses; and as such it purposes that their courage, above even their suffering in battle, was the principal attribute of these honest lives that have become examples of unconditional bravery in the past, present, and future.
This is a narrative of values and empathy taking center stage in war and history. Humankind has been sorely unappreciative in our understanding of animal intelligence, and scientists are discovering that the range of animal ability and emotion is far more complex then ever expected. With this knowledge the narrative becomes even more poignantly amazing as a story of individual strength in war.