Horses

I've become besotted with these creatures, since starting to visit a riding and livery stables on the marshes very close to my home in Hackney East London. I spend hours sketching them, and have filled about 50 sketchbooks already in less than two years.

I find the company of these non-aggressive creatures totally therapeutic -especially in contrast to the onslaught of relentless in your face city life, and with their lack of complex agenda, they seem to me to be close to pure honesty.

I have started to get commissions for portraits - the first of which was for an oil on canvas of a chestnut called Franklyn.

This is a version of a portrait commission I did

This is a digital painting from on of the sketches i made for the Franklyn portrait.

I am interested in revealing the sculptural form of the animal, with line and with colour, and particularly in getting the light that illuminates aspects in beautiful ways; But I'm also always trying to capture the particular character of the particular horse

I have begun digitally painting from some of my sketches and i use the process to help me develop and plan paintings I will then produce in oil on canvas.

Above all I am interested in capturing the action and movement of these elegant and athletic beasts. I make constant quick sketches trying to follow the action of a horse with my pencil - to capture aspects of their movement, of the gestures and the shapes made, with a few swiftly recorded lines and marks in my sketchbook.

I also love to watch how horses interact with each other when they are turned out in the pasture

. Cashmere is the only other horse that Franklyn can tolerate the company of, or the only horse who will tolerate Franklyn's alpha male behaviour. Its fascinating to watch them when the hay feed is brought to their paddock.

Drawings and paintings from observation of action can become so much more dynamic for it.

The days when the farrier is at the yard, are a great opportunity to study anatomy more intensively, as a horse will be tied on a simple head collar outside in the light, and generally standing pretty stationary. Even dozing while it waits to be seen.