Horses

When I was about 4 years old I imagined I had a secret horse that I kept hidden behind a settee. A love of the beauty of horses has stayed with me. The spark of interest probably dates back to early American B&W TV series like Champion the Wonder Horse and The Lone Ranger, then later Bonanza (especially Little Joe's Pinto) and Rawhide. Saturday Morning Kids Cinema in Gateshead always had Cowboys & Indians galloping on horseback across the big screen.

I used to enjoy watching horse racing on TV and especially seeing the pre race in-the-paddock close ups of the beautifully primed racers. Names like Red Alligator and Arkle are stored in my memory bank.

Black Beauty, War Horse, National Velvet... are all vivid memories... as are fairground horses, the 4 Horses of the Apocolypse, Stroller... and many more in paintings like those by George Stubbs, Velasquez etc.

During the last year I have compulsively made over 450 artworks... a sub set of these is Horses.

See more Horse artworks

In a social media dialogue I was asked the question: "How long does it take you to make one of these artworks?"

My answer:

Gordon Coldwell In one sense the work has taken me a lifetime of wanting to make these works (now aged 62)... a full on art & design teaching career... then senior posts in education marketing... followed by 9 years of running 2 businesses hasn't left much time for making art. It is felt likely that having Parkinson's disease my have triggered an obsessive/compulsive need to make artworks - starting in early 2015 I acquired and iPad and image manipulating software I taught myself how to use (control) Photoshop... I have made over 450 works since then. See and read more: www.coldwellandcoldwell.co.uk So how long does it take? Months of hard work to acquire skills / a lifetime of looking at and thinking about art.