Whitney, TX
My process is physical and paced like an animal’s breath: press, lift, drag, wait. Wet-into-wet lets motion blur a shoulder; wet-over-dry lets me scaffold planes—muscle over bone, memory over motion. The mane is the heartbeat of this piece. I lift and rake paint so individual strands stand in low relief, a chorus of knife-made filaments that take light on their edges and surrender it in the troughs. As you move, the mane appears to flicker; those raised strands make the stallion seem alive even when the composition is still. I keep the honest, varied sheens of the pigments—gloss on high passages, satin where paint settles—so the surface breathes.
Photographs flatten this. Screens cannot hold the elevation changes, the cast shadows, or the way color compresses and then breaks open along the lifted strands of the mane. The work must be met in person, at arm’s length, where you’re tempted to reach out and learn with your fingertips.
Emotionally, this painting asked for restraint. I scraped out as often as I added in. Reverence, to me, is a conversation with something that could crush you and doesn’t. While working, I kept returning to the quiet between heartbeats: the pause where trust is negotiated. I didn’t want a portrait of a horse; I wanted presence—the dignity of weight carried with grace, the paradox of strength that chooses gentleness. That is why the composition holds tension between diagonals of energy and fields of negative space; the body is built from decisive strokes, but edges dissolve, as if wind is finishing what I began. The mane anchors this paradox—wildness organized, motion held.
My materials philosophy is simple: let paint be paint. Thick, luminous, sculptural. The knife writes a different sentence than a brush; it refuses prettiness, favors clarity, leaves proof of the hand. Those marks matter conceptually. They assert that the stallion’s authority is not polished; it is earned. The surface becomes a terrain—crest, ledge, and the wind-caught mane—so the viewer’s eye hikes it rather than gliding past a picture.
Meaningfully, The Stallion Reverence reaches beyond equine imagery. It is a study of sovereignty and mercy—how real power is measured by what it chooses not to do. It is also a self-portrait of discipline: the willingness to pause, to listen, to remove a dazzling passage if it lies. My broader practice sits at this crossroads of wildness and control, inviting viewers into proximity with force that is both dangerous and safe. If there is a narrative, it is the body learning to hold its own weather.
For judges, I invite a slow look: move side to side; watch the mane ignite and go dark; notice where impasto thins to let a breath of ground speak. This piece is not only seen; it is encountered. In that encounter, I hope you feel what I felt while building it: gratitude for a creature—and a moment—that reminds us strength is most beautiful when it kneels to wonder.
