There is a difference between looking at a horse and really seeing one.
I think most people who spend time around horses understand this instinctively. You can recognise a horse from across a field, know its breed, its colour, perhaps even its age, and yet there is something else to notice. The way it carries its head. The particular set of its ears. The length of its stride. The expression in its eye when it is curious, watchful, relaxed or quietly impatient.
These are the things I look for when I paint.
I have always been fascinated by the fact that two horses can stand in almost exactly the same pose and yet feel completely different. One can appear proud and self-contained; another slightly mischievous; another gentle and almost melancholy. The anatomy may be similar, but the presence is not.
For me, that is where a painting begins.
Beyond getting the horse right
There is a wonderful tradition of artists who have taken the horse seriously as a subject.
George Stubbs is perhaps the most obvious example. His anatomical studies were extraordinarily rigorous, but his horses never feel like diagrams. They have individuality and presence. He understood that knowing the structure of the horse was essential, but that knowledge was there in service of the painting rather than as an end in itself.
Alfred Munnings approached the horse very differently. His understanding came through a lifetime of being around horses, riding, sketching and painting them in the landscape. His work has an extraordinary sense of movement and atmosphere because he understood horses not simply as structures, but as living animals occupying a particular moment and place.
I find both approaches fascinating.
The lesson I take from them is not that a horse has to be painted in one particular way. Quite the opposite. It is that you have to know what you are looking at before you decide how to paint it.
That understanding of tradition is important to my own work, but I don't think of myself as simply continuing a classical tradition. My paintings are contemporary Romantic paintings, rooted in classical equine and figurative ideas but shaped by my own response to the horse, to landscape and to Scotland.
The tradition gives me a foundation.
The painting has to find its own voice.
I don't begin with the colour
When I am studying a horse, colour is actually quite a long way down the list.
I begin with structure.
How does the neck leave the shoulder? How does the back carry into the hindquarters? Where is the weight? How does the horse stand naturally when it isn't posing for the camera?
Then I look at the head.
The head can tell you an extraordinary amount. The shape of the forehead, the muzzle, the placement of the eyes and ears, the line of the jaw — these things establish identity. But even within those details there is something less tangible.
Character.
A horse can have a beautiful head and still not be particularly expressive in a painting. Another might have a small irregularity, an unusual marking or a slightly unexpected expression that makes the whole portrait come alive.
Those details matter.
In fact, sometimes the thing that makes a horse recognisable to its owner is the very thing that another person might overlook.
Every horse has its own language
I paint horses of many breeds, and I enjoy that variety.
A Thoroughbred has a very different visual language from a Highland pony. An Arabian carries itself differently from a Clydesdale. A Friesian has a particular drama in its neck, mane and movement; a compact native pony can have an entirely different sense of character.
But I don't want breed to become a formula.
The challenge is to understand what makes this particular horse itself.
Breed gives me information. Conformation gives me information. The setting gives me information. But none of them tells the whole story.
The horse does.
That is why I am interested in the individual rather than simply producing a recognisable type of horse painting. My own style remains consistent, but the horse has to be allowed to speak for itself within it.
Strength and vulnerability
Perhaps one of the reasons I continue to return to the horse is the extraordinary balance it contains.
A horse is immensely powerful. There is weight, muscle, speed and physical force. Yet at the same time there is sensitivity and vulnerability.
That tension interests me enormously.
It can be seen in the way a horse stands quietly, apparently completely composed, while every part of it remains alert to the world around it.
It is there in movement too.
A galloping horse is an obvious expression of power, but I am often more interested in the moment when movement is gathering or subsiding — when the animal is poised between stillness and action.
That balance between movement and composure is something I try to preserve in my paintings.
The importance of expression
One of the things I find most rewarding about equine painting is that expression can be incredibly subtle.
Horses don't need to be rearing, galloping or dramatically posed to hold attention.
Sometimes a quiet portrait is far more revealing.
A slightly turned head. An attentive ear. A softening around the eye. The suggestion that the horse has noticed something beyond the frame.
Those moments interest me because they create a sense of relationship between the horse and the viewer.
You aren't simply looking at the horse.
You begin to feel that the horse is looking back.
That small shift is important. It is often the difference between an image that records an animal and a painting that has a presence of its own.
What photographs give me — and what they don't
Photography is an important part of my working process, particularly when I am painting a commission.
But I don't think of a photograph as the finished answer.
A photograph gives me information. It records a particular instant, a particular light, a particular position of the body. What I need to understand is what sits behind that instant.
This is why, when working from photographs, I often want to see several images rather than simply one perfect photograph.
I want to see how the horse normally carries itself.
Is the head usually high or slightly lowered? Does the horse tend to stand squarely or rest a hind leg? How does the expression change when it is relaxed? What happens to the neck when it becomes interested in something?
These observations build a much more complete understanding of the subject.
The painting can then move beyond copying a photograph.
It becomes an interpretation of the horse.
And this is where instinct begins to matter.
There has to be a point at which observation gives way to painting.
Control and instinct
I work in layered oils, beginning with structured drawing and close observation, but the finished painting is not intended to feel overly controlled.
I like the tension between precision and suggestion.
Some passages need to be carefully described. Others can be softened, broken or deliberately left unresolved. Edges can disappear into atmosphere; a line can be suggested rather than stated. Brushwork can become more expressive where the subject calls for it.
For me, this is particularly important with the horse.
The flowing movement of a mane or tail can be heightened, for example, not simply to make it dramatic, but to allow the physical energy of the animal to become almost elemental.
Yet there has to be restraint.
Too much movement and the dignity of the horse is lost. Too much description and the painting can become merely illustrative.
The interesting place, for me, is somewhere between the two.
Stillness can be powerful
There is a tendency, particularly with equine imagery, to think that movement is what creates drama.
Of course it can.
A horse in full gallop has extraordinary visual energy. But stillness has its own authority.
A horse standing quietly in a landscape can possess an almost monumental quality. The longer you look, the more you notice: the weight through the limbs, the subtle turn of the body, the texture of the coat, the way the light moves across the musculature.
This is one reason I am drawn to the Romantic tradition.
It allows the visible world to carry something beyond the literal.
A landscape can become more than a backdrop. A horse can become more than a study of anatomy. Light, atmosphere, gesture and colour can suggest something that isn't easily put into words.
That might be memory.
It might be longing.
It might simply be the feeling of standing beside a horse and being aware of its presence.
The horse and its setting
I rarely think of the horse completely separately from its surroundings.
Place can tell us something about character.
A horse in an open Highland landscape feels different from one standing in a stable yard, beneath trees, beside a stone wall or against a quieter, more restrained background. The setting establishes a relationship between the subject and the world around it.
This is particularly important to me as a Scottish artist.
Scotland has a strong visual and cultural inheritance, and landscape is inevitably part of the way I see. The weather, the changing light, the old stone, the open spaces and the particular sense of history held within the land all find their way into my work.
But I don't want the landscape to become a piece of scenery placed behind a horse.
It needs to belong to the painting.
Sometimes it is almost felt rather than described.
Sometimes it becomes an important part of the drama.
Either way, the horse remains the centre of attention.
What I am really looking for
Ultimately, when I paint a horse, I am looking for presence.
Not perfection.
Perfection can actually be rather lifeless.
I want the painting to retain something of the individuality of the animal — the quality that makes an owner recognise their horse immediately, even before noticing the details.
That is also why I don't think an equine painting should be judged solely by how accurately it reproduces a photograph.
Accuracy matters. Anatomy matters enormously. Drawing matters. Understanding light and form matters.
But those things are the foundations, not necessarily the destination.
The real question for me is whether the horse feels as though it has arrived on the canvas.
Whether there is weight to the body.
Whether the eye has thought behind it.
Whether the character survives the translation from living animal to painted surface.
And perhaps that is the simplest way to describe how I see them:
I am not simply looking for what a horse looks like. I am looking for what makes that horse itself.
That is where the painting begins.
