Painting project “Blue Horses”

Here are paintings  of the Konik breed of wild horses at Wicken Fen Nature Reserve in Norfolk.  I spotted a clip on a tv programme about re-wilding.  I loved the proud and natural way the horses were bonding with each other, and I quickly grabbed my phone to take a few snaps.  The four paintings are inspired by these photos.  In the first two the mares are lying down and seem to be communing with each other and with their foals in the evening light.   I made two versions, the full scale ones are 600 x 420 mm (acrylic on canvas) and the larger cropped versions are also acrylic but on sheets of plywood (760 x 610 mm)

In the second two paintings the light seemed much more blue and I wanted to express that dramatic effect.  I became fascinated by the shapes and so painted the horses in almost flat colour particularly in the larger paintings.  Throughout this project, including the three previous paintings projects, I have started to become bolder and more confident about working abstractly and on a larger scale.