These paintings were painted this fall when I was able to spend a lot of time outside in the best horse weather of the year, when the air is cool and crisp, the flies are gone, and the horses enjoy the warmth of the sun before winter arrives. I have a horse at my parent’s barn nearby, and do regular horse chores during the week to help take care of the small herd. The pasture is perched on top of the plateau in between Cayuga and Seneca lake in the Finger Lakes Region of New York, so the horses spend days and nights out beneath a vast sky that stretches far past the hills on the other side of the lake. One thing that I appreciate about having to do regular horse chores is that it’s necessary to be outside in all different types of weather, good and bad, in order to care for these magnificent, resilient and forgiving animals.

The horse in Under ever-changing skies is inspired by the shape of a cast zinc and sheet copper horse weathervane from 1860*, and the landscape is the view the horses see from their pasture. Compositionally, the horse is in the sky to express how the horses live with such proximity to the big sky. At the bottom of the painting is an image of a large barn lit up by a floodlight, with clouds moving in above the paddock, which is the view I see on my walk to the barn at night. There’s an interplay in this piece with dusk and night, a merging of time suggesting many moments at once. Painting might just be the closest we can come to being able to visualize time not being linear. In all weathers is about the horse being deeply connected to the seasons. My horse and her companions do not like to go inside for long; only on the coldest, most miserable night of the year would they genuinely prefer to be in their stalls. Painting these paintings was speaking to myself about learning to love the bright day and the dark night equally, both literally and metaphorically. The unicorn-beast creatures are inspired by a design on a wood painted hope chest from 1803*. They are like spiritual impressions of the two shiny horses in the small window at the bottom of paintings. The unicorns appear like they are growing out of the land, and merging with the clouds. Both pairs of animals exist under dusk and darkness.

* The weathervane [p. 143] and hope chest design [p. 230] imagery were found in The Flowering of American Folk Art (1776-1876), by Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester. The swan design at the base of Under ever-changing skies, is also from this collection, and is from a cornice board c. 1840-50 from the Hudson River Valley, NY [p. 202]