"Meek, Like A War Horse", Klahn

Christ As Horse Rider, 14 X 18, Ink, inquire here for print.

I was so taken by Casey Klahn 's comment in the previous post, that I couldn't resist using it as the title here, and showing the second of the Hittite triptych.  His comment is incredibly insightful--as it always is--that's definitely a war horse. 

The third of the Hittite Triptych was sold to the artist Jill Dodson, an equestrian, equestrian portrait and plein aire painter.  She admired the movement of all that horseflesh, and wanted to know where I studied horse anatomy.  Horse anatomy?  Where do you study that?  I pled ignorance as usual.  Something tells me Casey's going to say, "Stop whining already and just call it a diptych".

Anyway, the image emerged from rapid scribbling--whole arm movements--gesturals.  I used a rolling writer because, well, the ink could fly out of it fast enough.  Many times in this kind of drawing I would actually wear the ball down and part of the pen tip by shear abrasion.  The ink would run out and the resulting friction would cause this.  The fouling effects are made with charcoal dust and an eraser. 

Wm

A Tale Of The Right Brain Leaping



I Am A Hittite In Love With A Horse, 14" X 18", 1980, inquire here for print.



Marini Homage, 5" X 8", 1990, inquire here for print.



Nothing meant anything as I sat, depressed, before a brand new pile of graph paper--huge 3'x 3' sheets--ready to draw up a storm, but with absolutely nothing in my head.  I was on the absolute bottom--no inspiration whatsoever.  Flipped on the radio, and this guy was giving a talk on Frank O'Hara.  I had been scribbling for about a year, in black ink, dying to bust out and introduce something representational back into my art.   The conditions were right for the perfect storm.  And he began to read this poem: 

Grace
to be born and live as variously as possible.

The conception of the masque barely suggests the sordid identifications.

I am a Hittite in love with a horse.

I don't know what blood's in me

I feel like an African prince

I am a girl walking downstairs in a red pleated dress with heels

I am a champion taking a fall

I am a jockey with a sprained ass-hole

I am the light mist in which a face appears and it is another face of blonde

I am a baboon eating a banana

I am a dictator looking at his wife

I am a doctor eating a child and the child's mother smiling

I am a Chinaman climbing a mountain

I am a child smelling his father's underwear

I am an Indian sleeping on a scalp and my pony is stamping in the birches,
and I've just caught sight of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
What land is this, so free?

Frank O'Hara

After the first couple lines, I lept for a pencil and wrote down each of these 'I am' images, and went through that stack of paper in rapid scribble mode watching the images emerge.  Even made up some of my own.  Still am.  My Hittite piece is one of three equestrians that came from those graph paper sessions.  At last images were back in my work. 

The Horse and Rider by Marino Marini caught my eye at the Hirshhorn about ten years later. One look and and the same kind of energetic peotic leap happened.  Stood there smiling drawing this, transcending the miseries of the world. 

Wm