the cave horses
Between 1984 and 1992 I lived in Drachten, NL. Several times I went to draw horses at the horse riding school and I bought books to study their anatomy or postures that I did seldom/never see at the stables. After a while I had a small pile of sketches. I stopped and put the sketches away in a drawer. To be honest: this was for several years, a period of asking myself if and how I wanted to be an artist.
One of these questions was the one about the urge for originality and/or authenticity and I realized that all visual artists stand on the shoulders of their prehistoric ancestors that lived in caves and carved in animal bones and painted on the cave walls.
It went 2006; after a 15-years retreat of not painting at all, I was making a fresh new start with a few smaller drawings and paintings, and than the idea came, almost as a need, of making much larger works.
To show my tribute to the artists from the caves I made reliefs like cave walls with papier-maché, kneading it to horse-like forms, using my old sketches. I just needed to draw a line around the bumps and the horses appeared…, I guess this is just like the stone-age cave painters did. Next thing was to give the horses some color and they started to run and tumble over the 2 meter-plus broad panels….