Exuberant Beginnings
The Early Lives of Horse Paintings
The great Paul Cezanne said 'It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas'. I incompletely agree! For me it is more horrific and titillating to raise up a painting from childhood to maturity--with each exciting new stroke to exciting new stroke. Yet, strokes can go bad--therefore the paradox. And the paradox becomes a beautiful nightmare when we dream of existing in this rambunctious youth forever--a forever that can last through the eyes of a camera, however. Each tentative inclination of a work from the blank canvas to its framed finish can frolic away into its own art history. Each accomplished painting (yeh, no doubt the unsuccessful ones) revisits its precarious past-tense--its bold aspirations--its exuberant beginnings. The 'Early Lives of Horse Paintings' recollects the wonder moments of a number of my equine pictures through the years, and where some of the featured works have long grown up by now--some never will. Ah, a perpetual state of construction! Some adult lives often lose this spunk of exploration, this wide-eyed search through the known-unknown. And art is no different. Both paintings and humans wish to remain gems of fluidity and freshness for the end of time. Life is energy--a horse galloping an open field, an idea. Enjoy this view into the adolescence of my horsie art!
artist email: a4valentino@gmail.com