Horse and Rider II 2020

Horse and Rider II - Marble - 41 x 29 x 22 cm -

My first encounter with ‘Horse’ was when I was very young at the RDS summer show. Around about the stables there a tanned excited immensity clopped about and I was no taller, it seemed at the time, than its knee. Whom I was with, or had I a hand to hold, isn’t part of the memory just pure awe at its size power and beauty.  That was the start of my infection. That immensity and intensity I experienced was something, since then, I haven’t encountered. What has evolved in the years since has manifested through exploring meaning, through connectedness to and isolation from, through a take by the rubber bandits and having a ‘horse outside’ as distinct from a Subaru or a Honda Civic and what that means, through a historical interest in how human civilisation evolved to the modern era over an interwoven existence spanning 6 millennia with Horse and what that has meant and why it happened at all; what is it, about humankind, that directed it so and not least that I got taller and with it a changing viewpoint that allowed more imported empathy and connectedness to a wider world and to self.   Horse was there as a subject and as a prop. As a prop it allowed me to work with the figure where the horse below could disrupt the gravity for the figure above, balance etc.