A few months ago I was invited to be part of the creative team for an exciting new project directed by Mural Mosaic. Called Le Cadeau du Cheval, or The Horse Gift, it consists of a very large mural that is made up of panels painted by the creative team of artists. When all put together, the panels form a large image and yet each panel is an individual work of art in itself. The concept is pretty neat, so I suggest you visit the website to see how these unusual murals are created.
Two weeks ago I received my panel which is shown above. The object is to paint whatever I want on the panel while keeping the same color scheme and values (lights and darks). Anything, that is, related to horses.
The first challenge was to come up with an idea for my panel. The colors reminded me of the sea, so I thought about how the sea and horses are related. Then I remembered the legend of how the Chincoteague ponies came to live on Assateague Island hundreds of years ago. The legend says that they swam ashore from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, possibly one of the treasure ships sent to the New World to explore and bring back plunder. It is also surmised that the horses brought over on these galleons by the Spanish escaped or were turned loose and became the ancestors of today's mustangs. It seems fitting then, that the subject of my panel be these Spanish horses, probably Andalusians, carried on ships to the New World; Poseidon's Gift from the sea.
I will be updating you as this project progresses and will be posting the images on my website where they can be seen larger. I've already begun, so take a look to see how my panel is progressing.
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