...Is quite often the first question that a lot of people ask me when I show them my artwork (sometimes with a sneer), and the answer is quite simple; I own a horse and have became so entangled in the horsey world that there isn't a part of my life that hasn't been affected by him. Indeed, for the last just-over-a-decade - since I met my horse-daft other half Jo, funnily enough - I have been enjoying the outdoors (read: pushing a wheelbarrow around in horizontal rain picking up horse poo, among other glamorous activities), tearing my hair out in frustration over how bloody fragile these creatures are and gawping in disbelief at how quickly my bank account has been emptying thanks to horsey provisions and livery every month.
This makes it sound as though my life as a horse owner is one of hell and misery, but it's actually been an educational and wonderfully enjoyable experience, with some incredible life-affirming highs that have inevitably been tempered with soul-crushing lows, mostly due to the fact that my horse - a now 13 year old Highland Pony called Einar - has suffered quite a few health setbacks and unfortunate incidents, which naturally equates to Jo and I having to spend LOTS of money on vet bills, medication, physios, feed supplements, tinctures, potions and who knows what else. Throughout all of this however, I've held the constant belief that horses are incredibly inspirational creatures; I find the beauty of their form, the grace in their movement and the vast amount of energy and agility they posess simply breathtaking, not to mention the fact that they're unbelievably intelligent and companionable. I guess this is why so many artists feature them in their artwork, huh?
My penchant for doing horsey-related art began during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 & 2021 when, with a lot of spare time on my hands, I started experimenting with different art techniques in the hopes of achieving something wildly colourful and interesting to look at, mainly because most of my art up until that point was monochrome. While playing around with Sharpie markers, I drew the outline of a horse and filled it with an array of colourful dots, which resulted in the colourful image you see above. I ended up using this same technique on a few other experimental pieces, but it wasn't until I done a piece involving a tiger where the real building blocks of my pointillism technique really started to take form.
Blending the larger dots from the Sharpie markers with tiny dots from fineliner pens and then adding contrasting splotches of black for the tiger's stripes, I created something that I thought looked really cool; it looked like modern pop art. The big downside was, of course, that it took absolutely ages to complete, thanks to all of those tiny dots. A few other pointillism pieces followed the tiger where I continued experimenting with the Shapie markers, but it soon dawned on me that I needed to up my game, so I started looking at alternatives to them. After a period of research and head-scratching, it became clear that the general opinion of artists worldwide was that Copic markers were the best available, used alcohol-based ink (which is more vibrant, fade resitant and blendable) and were refillable. They are, however, pretty expensive and come in a multitude of colours, meaning that I was looking at a significant investment if I wanted to use them. Before that, however, I needed to get some to see if I liked them so I purchased a starter set and set about experimenting with them.
Unsurprisingly, I was not disappointed; the colours were bold and vibrant, the brush nibs on them allowed me to do large dots as well as tiny pinpricks of colour, and the wedge nib on the other end conjured up endless possibilities, so I started thinking about what to try doing with them first, and rather inevitably it ended up being a horse - the Highland Pony 'Dougall' print you can find in my shop. I ended up doing several different pieces for different breeds of horses and found that my pointillism technique improved and evolved with each one. A big stylistic change happened during the Luisitano piece, in which I used a new technique to isolate individual large dots using smaller ones which made the pieces look much more dynamic and interesting, and my Fjord Horse piece and other newer pieces continued to followed that trend.
So what's next? Well, as you might be able to tell from my most recent piece 'The Guardian of Time', I've decided to move away from horses. This is mostly because I'm happier when I'm getting to flex my imagination and creating original things, so expect to see a lot more in the way of that as I've got a lot of interesting ideas bubbling away in my noggin. The other reason I'm stepping away from doing horse-based art is that I don't want to be pigeonholed as an 'equine artist', and because I get bored really quickly, I would imagine that I'd feel jaded and give up on doing art as a result if I kept on doing different iterations on the same theme - which I obviously don't want to happen.
I've got another big project coming soon which will see my art going up in front of the public for the first time, so I'm going to be concentrating on putting my efforts into that before starting my next piece, but for now the future is looking bright. I hope you stick with me to see how it all pans out!
-Craig
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