Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Polo

Finding inspiration can sometimes be a challenge.  I often go through dry periods where I'm not motivated enough to paint.  That's usually when I write.  But thankfully a few weeks back, when the weather was still nice, a friend took me (finally!) to the polo in Portsmouth, where I got to see USA vs. Italy.  I say finally, because I've lived in Portsmouth for over nine years, and I've never been, which seems insane considering it's literally around the corner from me.

Anyway, it was quite an experience.  Wine flowed, copious amounts of cheese and deli meats were consumed (my friend is Italian), and the polo ponies rumbled past.  I understand it's a dangerous sport, which I witnessed first hand.  One of the Italians either got whacked in the chest with a mallet, or fell off his horse, I'm not entirely sure, but the poor guy writhed on the ground for a while until he recovered enough to carry on.  Ouch.  Obviously, I took my camera and snapped as many pics as I could (of the horses, not the injured Italian), and came up with a few promising compositions.  I completed my first painting last week, with hopefully more to come.

I've always been fascinated by horses.  I think they're beautiful creatures.  I used to draw and paint them as a teenager.  That's why my focus is the horse, and why I've partially decapitated the rider.  To me, he's not nearly as important.

Being very critical of my own work, I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with this piece.  I like the energy of the horse, but that huge expanse of grass to the left really bothers me.  I may take that into account in my next composition.  I might make it a tighter crop, so there's even more horse, and less grass.  My other gripe is that I wished I'd got a bit of blue sky in there somewhere.  It was a gorgeous day, but there's a huge wall of trees behind the polo grounds, and they became the backdrop instead of the sky, and I really don't like painting trees for some reason.  Perhaps next time I'll take a walk around the grounds and get a different perspective.  (That's the problem with drinking too much wine - I didn't think to change my position!)  That'll have to be next summer though.  The polo is over for the year.  I'm just glad I got to go the once.  It was fun.

Polo Pony - 18x18"

1 comment:

Anne Winthrop Cordin said...

Hi Jane, I love it as it is! Sometimes I forget that as the artist I can take the liberty to drop that tree line, remove it altogether, and break up the grass with different shadow shapes. Can't wait to see what you do next with these horses, I was also obsessed as a kid and drew tons of horses.LOL